What do we do with difficult photographs? Last week, I asked this question in an installation @parrishartmuseum interrogating the phenomenon of white Americans dressing up as native people to spin a false mythology justifying occupation of native land, a phenomenon present in American life before there was a United States. Two pictures in the historical archives of Greenwich, CT from 1940 inspired this work. Both were lies. The first (with white people dressed as native Siwanoy/Wiechquaesqueck) re-enacted a moment of betrayal when Europeans bought the land of Greenwich for a measly 25 coats, which they never paid. The second re-enacted the 1644 Pound Ridge Massacre in which white soldiers burned down a structure killing 100s of native people, not the other way around as depicted in the 1940 picture in which white people dressed as Indians pretended to burn white people’s homes. 🤯 I installed these photos (generously on loan from the Greenwich Historical Society despite concerns they might make the town look bad) behind purportedly stolen picket fences now used to block traffic on private roads owned by the mega-rich. Signs of wealth obscure the lies told to enable it. Pictures of “playing Indian” are everywhere, in municipal archives, in museums, and in personal archives, including my own. The photograph being consumed by my daughter is of my own “Cowboys and Indians”-themed 6th birthday party in 1982. We need to examine the narratives that make up our personal and public histories, to reckon with our complicity in existing mythologies that justify stolen land. This is part of wider project about the intersecting histories of wealth and indigeneity in Greenwich, CT. See more in the previous and next posts. Installation view of Eric Gottesman as part of Another Justice: Us Is Them @forfreedoms @parrishartmuseum @hankwillisthomas, Water Mill, New York, Jul 23 to Nov 6, 2022. Photo: @garymamayphoto The show is curated by @hankwillisthomas @carlyfischer and includes work by @zoebuckman @kambuiolujimi @joiriminaya @hankwillisthomas @pamelacouncil @themunamalik @jeffrune @koyoltzintli @marie_watt_studio @chrisunkim @jeremynative