One thing that interests me about early 20th-century advertising in the U.S. is how ideas and imagery of Native Americans are used to inscribe authenticity and legitimacy in products. Take this 1915 ad for Seneca cameras I found at an antique store:
When Seneca meets Seneca
This Seneca Indian Chief, Wy-ten-ac (Quick Eye), with his years of training, cannot get as accurate an impression of the things he sees as can any Boy Scout with the Seneca Scout Camera.
Click image to enlarge.
The layout of the ad itself presents an transition from a traditional view of perceiving the world to a modern view. The Seneca chief, at the far left of the ad, appears to be looking at something, but what? Because the object of the chief’s gaze is ambiguous, the act of looking, of seeing, becomes the focus of the ad’s viewer. Following the thick line below the chief, the viewer then sees a box or booklet for Seneca Cameras, with another Native American image on the cover. Continuing to follow the line, the viewer’s eye then runs into two cameras from the Seneca Camera “tribe”, until finally ending at a young Boy Scout using a Seneca camera. Again, the focus of the boy’s gaze is unknown, but here again the act of looking is important. Both subjects, the Seneca chief and the Boy Scout, are in the act of seeing. Although the perspective of the ad is off, it’s possible that the Seneca chief and the Boy Scout are looking at each other, each observing the other in an attempt to get a “accurate impression”. The transition in the ad, from the chief, to the camera’s packaging, to the cameras themselves, to the boy using the camera, connects the modern way of seeing the world as the traditional, native way. Yet, the ad proposes that users of Seneca cameras will better the methods of the Seneca chief and give anyone the power to improve upon this Native power.
The ad also poses new relationships among human beings and technology. Even the Seneca chief, with his “quick eye” and “years of training” is unable to get an “accurate” or “sure” impression of his environment. Oh, but the Boy Scout can! Simply using this piece of techology, this camera, the boy can get “an intensely interesting record of happenings and events.” The ad is an example of how American moved, according to Miles Orvell, from a culture of imitation to a culture of authenticity. Whereas technology in the nineteenth century was seen as a tool for creating imitations, technology in the early twentieth century was seen to help create authentic and accurate items.1 The ad rests on the idea of Native American “authenticity” in the act of perceiving the world, and creates through the camera a more accurate, and thus more authentic, impression of the world.
1Miles Orvell, The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940. (1989)