Face Pullers and eye-opening book

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Indians called the camera the "face-puller." They distrusted the "white man's mystery box," and regarded it with a mixture of curiosity, hostility and fear.

Now, the photographers and their subjects are the focus of The Face Pullers: Photographing Native Canadians 1871-939 (Fifth House, 184 pp, $29.95) by Brock Silversides.

His book, packed with 192 pictures, is an eye-opening look at the trickery of the camera. Silversides reveals how photographs of Natives showed just about everything but the truth.

"One thing I would like to see is readers looking over this material and maybe their ideas of Natives have come from the photographs they've seen," says Silversides, who is the chief audio-visual archivist for the Provincial Archives of Alberta.

Silversides found white photographers' ideas of Natives fell into four groups. Documentary photography came out of the first contact with Natives, when genuine curiosity motivated the photographs.

Towards the end of the 19th century, white society believed Natives were a dying race. The photographers fanned out to take shots of famous and representatives Indians.

"It made for some very nice photographs," says Silversides, "but it followed European conventions of portraiture."

A transition period followed where Silversides says white society took it upon themselves to "Christianize" Natives. The resulting photos show pictures of Aboriginals in white clothing, doing white activities.

And the last group of photographers tries to recapture the exotic idea of the Indian by depicting them in headdresses, buckskins and other foreign-looking outfits and settings.

"We all have a certain Hollywood postcard image of the Indian and I don't think that has anything to do with reality whatsoever," says Silversides.

As an archivist, he came across fascinating pictures of Natives, many of them without identification. Starting about 10 years ago. Silversides began to research the photos. He discovered a wealth of material - more than 400 related photographs.

As an archivist for the Provincial Archives, he looks after some half-a million phonographs, dating back to the 1860s, as well as a film collection and an archive of some 10,000 sound recordings.

Silversides says he tries to put historical material into a form where people may learn from it.

"Obviously, one person can only do so much, but even if it helps a little bit to bring out the idea that there is something of value in prairie culture, then I think it's worthwhile."