Indigenous Humor and Acts of Resistance Highlighted at The Photography Show
Title: Indigenous Photographers Redefine the Lens at the 2024 AIPAD Photography Show
As the annual Photography Show presented by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) returned to the Park Avenue Armory in 2024, visitors were met with an unexpected thematic evolution. Traditional photojournalism—often laden with images of social unrest and historical crises—took a backseat this year. Instead, galleries focused their lens on personal, political, and deeply introspective works from Indigenous artists. These creators are using the camera not simply as a tool to document the world, but as a vehicle for storytelling, cultural critique, and joyful resistance.
Among the 64 exhibitors, several booths drew particular attention for their bold celebration of Indigenous identity, heritage, and creativity. Through humor, historical revisionism, and layered visual narratives, artists including Shelley Niro, Zig Jackson, Douglas Miles, Cara Romero, and Eugene Tapahe presented a dynamic counterpoint to traditional narratives of Indigenous peoples in photography.
Shelley Niro: Humor, Heritage, and Healing
Toronto’s Stephen Bulger Gallery presented a four-decade overview of multitalented artist Shelley Niro (Bay of Quinte Mohawk, Turtle Clan). Niro’s works, which span photography, film, and mixed media, are infused with both biting wit and tender introspection. Her iconic Portraits series, started in 1991 during the turmoil of the Oka Crisis, captures joyous community moments at powwows, resisting the historical erasure often seen in dissent-driven media coverage.
“I think just making art as an Indigenous woman is political,” Niro explained. Her layered images, part family scrapbook, part visual protest, reflect the everyday strength and resilience of Indigenous life.
Zig Jackson: Satirical Reflections on Visibility
At the Andrew Smith Gallery’s booth, photographer Zig Jackson (Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara) continued this thread of subversion. His performative series “Indian Photographing Tourist Photographing Indian” hilariously flips the colonial gaze, challenging viewers to reflect on how Indigenous people have been historically portrayed—and consumed—through photography. His other works, such as “Indian Man In San Francisco,” document Native presence in urban landscapes, emphasizing that Indigenous identity is active, visible, and evolving.
Douglas Miles: Skate Culture Meets Apache History
Douglas Miles (Apache-Akimel O’odham), featured at Obscura Gallery, bridges past and present through digital collage. His striking compositions juxtapose historical images of Apache people with modern-day Native youth skateboarding—a surprising but effective pairing that speaks to cultural continuity and resistance. The humor within his work doesn’t mask its gravity; it amplifies its impact, making poignant historical commentary both accessible and unforgettable.
Cara Romero: Cosmic Portraiture and Indigenous Futurism
Chemehuevi photographer Cara Romero, presented by Scheinbaum Russek Gallery, pushes the boundaries of photographic realism with her theatrical and surreal digital portraits. In The Zenith (2022), artist George Alexander is immersed in a cosmic environment surrounded by floating white corn—an homage to cultural ancestors and foodways. Romero’s exploration of Indigenous futurism presents ancestral knowledge as essential to a sustainable future, reclaiming a space so often reserved for tech titans and fantasy.
Eugene Tapahe: Healing Through Movement and Memory
With the Art Heals: The Jingle Dress Project series on view at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Diné photographer Eugene Tapahe underscores photography’s role in collective healing. By capturing dancers in traditional regalia performing healing dances at historic and sacred sites across the U.S., Tapahe forges a profound link between ritual, land, and cultural memory.
Dakota Mace and Sarah Sense: Personal Memory as Cultural Archive
Represented by Bruce Silverstein Gallery, Dakota Mace (Diné) and Sarah Sense (Choctaw-Chitimacha) dive even deeper into the intersection of memory and identity. Mace’s works investigate the symbolic dimensions of language and family through dye-making and textile traditions, while Sense melds her own family history with broader colonial narratives using woven photographic prints. Each offers a reminder that the photographic medium can serve as both document and dialogue.
A New Canon in Indigenous Photography
What emerges across these diverse practices is an overarching shift: Indigenous photographers today are not content to serve as subjects in the documentary gaze. Instead, they are seizing the tools of image-making to present narratives on their own terms. Whether deploying irony, intimacy, or conceptual frameworks, their work repositions photography as a means of cultural agency rather than mere representation.
Throughout the 2024 AIPAD Photography Show, these artists challenged assumptions, stirred reflection, and often provoked laughter. Most importantly, they revealed how Indigenous stories—and those who tell them—are not footnotes in photographic history, but essential voices redefining its future.
As the fair wrapped up this April, it left attendees with a resounding message: the future of photography