Author Sarah Stacke discusses a landmark new photography collection with featured artist Táhila Moss.

The history of photography—and of the Americas—has long overlooked the work and perspectives of Indigenous image-makers, who have shaped the medium as creators, patrons, and collectors. Addressing this gap, photographers Brian Adams and Sarah Stacke created a groundbreaking digital library of Indigenous photographers—spanning from Jennie Fields Ross Cobb, the earliest known Indigenous American woman photographer, to contemporary artists today. In their new book In Light and Shadow, they build on this work, showcasing over eighty photographers who, over the course of more than two centuries, have used the camera as a tool for self-representation, cultural preservation, and political expression.

Stacke speaks with Táhila Moss, a featured photographer in the collection, about how Indigenous perspectives are reshaping the photographic canon.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Sarah Stacke is a photographer, writer, and archival researcher. 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 New York Times, NPR, The Nation, The Washington Post, and National Geographic.

Sarah is the author of Photos Day or Night: The Archive of Hugh Mangum, Love from Manenberg, Burt Ginn: Half a Century as a Magnum Photographer, and In Light and Shadow: A Photographic History from Indigenous America (co-authored with Brian Adams).

She is a faculty member at the International Center of Photography, holds an MA from Duke University, and is pursuing an MFA in Image Text at Cornell University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

For over 25 years, visual storyteller Táhila Moss has been photographing, video recording, and creating art in collaboration with Indigenous communities and diverse cultures around the world. She has worked in over 40 countries and has taught photography as a full-time faculty member for several years in different institutions. Her photography, film, and virtual reality experiences have shown nationally and internationally, including various solo exhibitions and in the Sharjah Biennial. She has been published in National Geographic and The New York Times, among other publications and books.

Táhila is a National Geographic Explorer, Magnum foundation fellow, and is regularly invited to speak on themes of water, Indigenous women and earth relationships at diverse places, including the United Nations. She creates integrative experiences that weave environmental relationship building, cultural awareness and positive mental health outcomes attempting to unravel, and recuperate from, colonial violence and frameworks.

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Courtesy Sarah Stacke
Courtesy Táhlia Moss