3D Perspectives: Re(Imag)ining Keystone View Company Stereograph provides access to early twentieth-century stereographs of Native North Americans, which have been repurposed by contemporary Indigenous artists and writers. Rather than dismissing archival images as ugly, disempowering, or meaningless, Indigenous communities have been reclaiming them since the 1980s. Fueled by worldwide 1970s activism, Indigenous peoples in Australia, the US, and Canada have used the so-called ‘ordinary’ or mass-produced photos as evidence of historical misconceptions and sources for writing new histories.

Since 2016, a team from Michigan State University including art historian Laura Smith, digital librarian Megan Kudzia, along with Navajo weavers Lynda Teller Pete and Barbara Jean Ornelas began talking about building a website that would feature a collection of stereographs held in the MSU Museum. The pilot project focused only on Diné (Navajo) subjects.  The goal was to use digital technology to animate the images through Indigenous narrations.  

We have researched and created this website to preserve and provide access to this archive of new writing on old images.  We will be commissioning further writing on additional stereographs from other North American Indigenous communities, which will be added to the website in the near future.  Please contact us if you want further information on this project or would like to be involved. [See Contacts]