A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska (Volume 10)

Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art and Photography of the American West

by Sergei Kan

This book is a rich record of life in small-town southeastern Alaska in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is the first book to showcase the photographs of Vincent Soboleff, an amateur Russian American photographer whose community included Tlingit Indians from a nearby village as well as Russian Americans, so-called Creoles, who worked in a local fertilizer factory. Using a Kodak camera, Soboleff, the son of a Russian Orthodox priest, documented the life of this multiethnic parish at work and at play until 1920. Despite their significance, few of Soboleff’s photographs have been published since their discovery in 1950. Anthropologist Sergei Kan rectifies that oversight in A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country, which brings together more than 100 of Soboleff’s striking black-and-white images.

Combining Soboleff’s photographs with ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, Kan brings to life the communities of Killisnoo, where Soboleff grew up, and Angoon, the Tlingit village. The photographs gathered here depict Russian Creoles, Euro-Americans, the operation of the Killisnoo factory, and the daily life of its workers. But Soboleff’s work is especially valuable as a record of Tlingit life. As a member of this multiethnic community, he was able to take unusually personal photographs of people and daily life. Soboleff’s photographs offer candid and intimate glimpses into Tlingit people’s then-new economic pursuits such as commercial fishing, selling berries, and making “Indian curios” to sell to tourists. Other images show white, Creole, and Native factory workers rubbing shoulders while keeping a certain distance during leisure time.

Kan offers readers, historians, and photography lovers a beautiful visual resource on Tlingit and Russian American life that shows how the two cultures intertwined in southeastern Alaska at the turn of the past century.

284 pages, Hardcover

First published July 5, 2013

Reviews

[Kate Campbell]

I'm delighted to read and recommend Dartmouth anthropologist Sergei Kan’s new photo book, "A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska." This 288-page large-format book from the University of Oklahoma Press offers for the first time more than 100 images taken by amateur photographer Soboleff in the late 1800s of Tlingit village life and settlement of rural Alaska at the turn-of-the-century. The images, archived in the Alaska State Library, capture the everyday lives of Russian and American settlers who lived among the tribal people.


What's of interest to me is Soboleff's documenting of the intertwining of these diverse cultures in coastal Killisnoo and Angoon. He photographed the community around him as an insider and also as a journalist. The images are unposed and natural, unlike the photography of his contemporaries. His photographs imply respect and include the names of his Tlingit subjects, not just labels like "old woman," "boy" or "Indian." He knew and respected his subjects.


I did considerable research into Coastal Salish tribes, to which the Tlingit are connected, for my novel, Adrift in the Sound. My novel includes Native American characters and incorporates traditional tales, from the Tlingit, Lummi and Haida nations. The melding of contemporary culture with historic traditions of Native Americans, which is depicted in Soboleff's images, has been fascinating to me since college anthropology days, and is an underlying theme in my book. I remain fascinated with ways culture shifts and is absorbed to create new and larger societies.

Soboleff's images, never before collected in book form, document this cultural melding and set the stage for an understanding of modern Alaska. A beautiful book, thoughtfully presented, by a respected anthropologist. Recommended for its historical and artistic value. A longer review is available online at www.kate-campbell.blogspot.com