Studio Portrait Session

Photographer Gertrude Kasebier documented Native American visitors to her Fifth Avenue studio in New York City. Members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show pause to sketch while awaiting their turn before her camera. Kasebier (1852–1934) was among the first photographers to treat Indigenous subjects with individualized attention rather than as exotic spectacle. Her studio sessions reveal the subjects as active participants—drawing, observing, and occupying her creative space—rather than passive objects of the photographic gaze.