Bodmer_Publication

Ein Mädchen der Blackfeet.
Aquarell auf Papier
Blackfeet Girl.
Watercolor on paper
(NEWBERRY NO. 39)
At the same time, the portraits again and again demonstrate the ethnographic
precision with which Bodmer treated dress and attributes – without making
a qualitative distinction between male and female domains in this respect.
Quan titatively, however, he does: we have many more male portraits than female
ones. Tableau 9, composed in the studio like many other prints, shows one of the
few women. The beauty of her robe and her entire appearance contrasts with
the simplicity of the child’s dress and tousled hair. Most of Bodmer’s sitters dressed
and made up for the occasion in order to display their status and, to an extent,
that of their group. The little girl, one might say, represents an intrusion of everyday
life into the series of portraits, which otherwise tends to avoid the quotidian.
It is precisely the everyday, however, that becomes important when seen from
a different angle. The Prince knows that the traditional Indian cultures are facing
destruction and undergoing a process of dramatic change, which is why his collecting
can be called urgent, or salvage, ethnography. Bodmer’s illustrations therefore
also have to document objects of everyday use, from simple tools to personal
adornment and ceremonial attire, which in the portraits appear as the imprint
of individuality. But the selection of objects shown is also defined by the situation
in the field and the fact that the encounters between Europeans and Indians were
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