Wayne Gudmundson: White Earth Window
June 1 – July 28, 2018
Artist Statement
This exhibit is not a definitive history of the White Earth Reservation. For that, one must look to William Warren’s History of the Ojibway People, Melissa Meyer’s The White Earth Tragedy, Michael McNally’s Ojibwe Singers, or Anton Treuer’s The Assassination of Hole in the Day.
Rather, these pairings of text and photos are vignettes or snap shots offering glimpses of some of the places and people as seen through the history of the Ojibwe at White Earth. This exhibit of twenty entries is a work-in-progress, representing a small portion of the larger family album of experiences tied to significant places set on what once was a communal reservation encompassing nearly 1300 square miles.
The photographs were made with a 4x5 view camera that, like the photographer, is sneaking up on 70 years of age. The technical processes employed here came into popular use around 1880, not long after the establishment of the White Earth Reservation in 1867.
Work Images:
Wayne Gudmundson, Artist Bio
Wayne Gudmundson’s work is in the permanent collection of many major museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, the Reykjavik Museum of Photography, the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal, and the Plains Art Museum in Fargo. His photographs have appeared in nine books, several public television documentaries, and numerous exhibits over the past forty years.
Gudmundson does not fish, yet claims Sunfish to be the best that Minnesota has to offer.