Much as I love Many Ray's photos I was somewhat underwhelmed by the Man Ray Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Maybe they've just become too familiar to me. Fortunately, I was able to get a sneak preview (one of the perks of being an NPG member!) of George Catlin's American Indian Portraits, which I've never seen before. During the 1830s Catlin made five trips to the western United States to document the native American people and their way of life. This was a time of rapid change in the American West. By 1837 over 45,000 indigenous people had been removed from their homeland in South Eastern US. Catlin was an opponent of white encroachment onto Indian lands, which he thought would lead to the inevitable extinction of Native American cultures in all their variety. The Sioux, Blackfoot, Choctaw, Comanche and Kichapoo are just some of those he painted. One of my favourite's is the portrait of Stu-mick-o-sucks, Buffalo Bull's Back Fat - a chief of the Blackfoot.
http://www.npg.org.uk