Ontario-based Native American photographer Shelley Niro is widely known for her ability to explode myths, transgress boundaries and embody the ethos of her matriarchal culture in a wide variety of mediums, including photography, installation, film and painting. Niro creates photographic series that emphasize the medium’s inherent capacity for narrative and representation. She pushes the limits of photography by incorporating Mohawk imagery, reappropriating traditional stories such as Skywoman and The Peacemaker, and by focusing on contemporary subjects with wit, irony and campy humor.
Niro marries portraiture, performance art and satire by having her subjects and herself perform for the camera in ways that gently invite audiences to rethink their beliefs and preconceptions about indigenous peoples and themselves. With compassion and deep insight, Niro opens up the fault lines and desires of gender, sexuality and culture to create images of freedom from the status quo in representation.
Featured image, from Steidl’s recent monograph on Ontario-based Native American photographer Shelley Niro, is titled “Ancestors” from the series M: Stories of Women, 2011. Published on the occasion of the artist’s recent Scotiabank Photography Award, this volume does a remarkable job of conveying the artist’s open, transgressive, matriarchal ethos with wit, irony and humor. The M series addresses the pre-modern Haudenosaunee story of a pregnant Skywoman who finds herself exiled from the night sky. It's the "story of women who live in this world,” Niro writes. “The depiction of Native women in Canada is deplorable. Often stories are bleak and serve only one purpose, to perpetuate Native women as losers and non-producers, often taking away from the common good of this society.… These stories are pulled and spread out for daily digestion depending on the political sway and often used as a divergent from the real issue.… My goal is to create another kind of image of Native North American women. Our legacy starts in the Skyworld. Through an act of accident, we are now inhabiting a world where we faced those everyday challenges and have found ways to thrive and survive.… I give thanks to my ancestors every day. I connect with them through my own imagination. The forward thinking of invention and the inclusion of the universe makes being a part of this world doable and positive. Everyone has their own story.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 12 x 9.75 in. / 228 pgs / 120 color / 70 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $65.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $87 ISBN: 9783958294011 PUBLISHER: Steidl/Scotiabank AVAILABLE: 6/26/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by Steidl/Scotiabank. Text by Ryan Rice, Wanda Nanibush.
Ontario-based Native American photographer Shelley Niro is widely known for her ability to explode myths, transgress boundaries and embody the ethos of her matriarchal culture in a wide variety of mediums, including photography, installation, film and painting. Niro creates photographic series that emphasize the medium’s inherent capacity for narrative and representation. She pushes the limits of photography by incorporating Mohawk imagery, reappropriating traditional stories such as Skywoman and The Peacemaker, and by focusing on contemporary subjects with wit, irony and campy humor.
Niro marries portraiture, performance art and satire by having her subjects and herself perform for the camera in ways that gently invite audiences to rethink their beliefs and preconceptions about indigenous peoples and themselves. With compassion and deep insight, Niro opens up the fault lines and desires of gender, sexuality and culture to create images of freedom from the status quo in representation.
