The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts is proud to present “The Disappeared: Native American Images from The Drapkin Collection,” May 21 through July 25, 2009.  More than 100 stunning historic vintage images are in this exhibition, drawn from the distinguished photography collection of Dr. Robert and Chintranee Drapkin of Clearwater Beach, Florida.

Less than twenty years after the invention of photography, historians, adventurers and photographers rushed to document the vanishing world of the Native American Indian before it was contaminated by Western culture.  “To the student of our history … and as mementoes of the race of red men,  now rapidly fading away, this series is of great value and interest,”  wrote James Earle McClees referring to his portraits of the important Indian chiefs and braves who visited Washington D.C. in 1857.

Men like Edward S. Curtis, Joseph Kossuth Dixon, William Henry Blackmore, Seth Eastman - and women like the Gerhard sisters - were driven to photograph the romantically exotic Native American cultures.  They were curious about the fierce, proud warriors who were vanishing.  And they were fueled by a desire to record the passing of a historic epoch - even as the memory of the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn (Custer’s Last Stand) was still fresh.

Sometimes these photographers acted as strictly scientific observers as they documented Native American customs.  Others staged and costumed their subjects to yield scenes conforming to the expectations of Americans accustomed to Wild West shows.  In part because of these images, the legacy of the Native American Indian remains alive.