Framing the West argues that photography was intrinsic to British territorial expansion and settlement on the northwest coast. Williams shows how male and female settlers used photography to establish control over the territory and its indigenous inhabitants, as well as how native peoples eventually turned the technology to their own purposes. Photographs of the region were used to stimulate British immigration and entrepreneuralism, and imagies of babies and children were designed to advertise the population growth of the settlers. Although Indians were taken by Anglos to document their "disappearing" traditions and to show the success of missionary activities, many Indians proved receptive to photography and turned posing for the white man's camera to their own advantage. This book will appeal to those interested in the history of the West, imperialism, gender, photography, and First Nations/Native America.

Carol J. Williams' profile page

Carol J. Williams is at University of Lethbridge.

"This imaginative book moves well beyond the conventional biographical approaches to photographers' work and the usual assumptions about the objectivity of historical photographs to develop a more subtle argument about how photographs can function as ideological documents. It is an important contribution to the field of western history as well as to the history of photography."--Martha A. Sandweiss, author of Print the Legend: Photography and the American West

"Williams' work highlights how photography was indeed a powerful tool in the construction of the 'primitive Indian' in need of colonial control and reformation." --Sage Race Relations Abstracts

"Williams's intricate readings of the intersections of class, race, gender, economic, religious, and political status return some measure of control to the photogrpahic subjects and honor the multiple, vexing reasons for their participation in the construction of a visual archive that has been broadly used to disenfranchise Indians."--Lisa MacFarlane, Western American Literature

"Williams does a very admirable job of sorting out the tangled yet oddly reciprocal mix of ideologies that informs the character of the photographs. Perhaps just as critically, she shrewdly points out a glaring void for other scholars to follow and fill in, and for that I am grateful, because many of the protagonists have yet come to terms with the presented history."--Larry McNeil, Boise State University and Tlingit and Nisgaá Nations