In Light and Shadow

“In Light and Shadow is an essential book that reshapes, transforms, and reframes the biased narrative of our existence in the Americas. Outsiders have been exploiting our images since the invention of photography and film, but finally we have a collection of our own photographers embodying the humor, spirit, pain, beauty, and love of our own people…A story that humanizes us one image at a time.”–Sterlin Harjo, filmmaker and 2024 MacArthur Fellow“Offering biographical summaries and selections of work from eighty photographers and spanning more than a century of image-making, In Light and Shadow is a glimpse into generally unknown records of Indigenous American art and life. The book is an exciting and significant contribution to the history of photography and to the ongoing redefinition of the photographic canon.” –Kathryn Humphries, art director, Harper’s Magazine“This book constitutes a relevant visual contribution to the collective postcolonial process that is taking place on the American continent. Indigenous peoples have resisted for centuries, using their own public appearance as an element that plays between light and shadow, to the point that we have believed them extinct or totally co-opted. However, they are there, whispering in our ears, que la luz será mañana para los más.”–Natalia Arcos Salvo, researcher and curator“This remarkable collection demonstrates how Indigenous people from across the Americas use photography for their own purposes. In their hands, images become a means to define community identities on their own terms, preserve cultures and histories, and advance political claims, including those surrounding land. In Light and Shadow compels us to see Native America in a new way.”–Shari Huhndorf, Class of 1938 Professor of Native American Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Brian Adams (Inupiaq) is an editorial and commercial photographer based in Anchorage, Alaska, specializing in environmental portraiture. His work has been featured in both national and international publications, and his work documenting Alaskan Native villages has been showcased in galleries across the United States and Europe. His most recent book, I Am Inuit was published in December 2017. Brian is a board member of Indigevsion and a member of Diversify Photo.

Sarah Stacke (Euro-American) is a photographer, author, and archival researcher based in Brooklyn, New York. Through projects created in dialogue with communities, she shares stories about relationships to the land and its histories to excavate under-considered pasts and better understand the present. Her work appears in Harper’s Magazine, the Nation, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and National Geographic. Sarah is a faculty member at the International Center of Photography (ICP) and holds an MA from Duke University. In Light and Shadow is her fourth book.