Zig Jackson’s Vision: ‘Culture is the most powerful thing you have in art’

One night, he decided to print a photo he’d taken of his mother. “I put her in the developer, and her facial features just shot out at me,” he said. “It was like an apparition. I ran out of the darkroom, and I was breathing hard, and I was scared.”

He quickly collected himself and returned to finish the photo. “Of course, by that time, with the light coming in, the whole image was black,” he said. Starting over, everything felt different. He was aware of the “power of the image,” and it changed his relationship to photography. “It was a sacredness,” he said.

Jackson, also known by his Indian name Rising Buffalo, is now an award-winning photographer. He is the first American Indian photographer collected by the Library of Congress and the first Native photographer awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation citizen grew up on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Art was part of his life for as long as he can remember. “What are you going to do in winter times in Dakotas?” he said. “We used to fight over cardboard from government foods. We could draw on them, me and my brothers, and paint.”

His mother was a beader and quiltmaker. “My aunties would come on over, and they’d make quilts,” he said. “And us kids would get underneath the big quilting frames and sketch horses, deer, and cowboys.”

Like many of his generation, Jackson attended Indian boarding schools, where he got a taste of what he could do as an artist; it was at St. Joseph’s Indian School in Chamberlain, South Dakota, that he got his first formal training in sketching and painting. At the Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah, he first learned to use a camera.

Boarding schools were also where he gained an awareness of the needs and problems that besiege tribal people everywhere—such as poverty, alcoholism and suicide. There, he understood that all Indian people are confronted with the same obstacles.

Until then, he’d believed that to be true only of his tribe.

Although Jackson is now well known for his photography, getting started wasn’t easy. Like many creative fields, photography can be costly, and while Jackson was in college, it was considered a luxury. At the time, he had little money beyond necessities. Fortunately, grants helped him get his start and purchase the equipment he needed.

He chose photography because he enjoyed capturing images of others and appreciated the craft itself. He wanted to use this skill to photograph American Indians, a group he saw rarely represented in photography at the time.

After mastering photography at the University of New Mexico and applying the skills his mentors had taught him, Jackson began traveling to reservations across the country each summer in his van. His wife, Kate, also a photographer, eventually joined him on these journeys. Throughout his K-12 and early college years, he met people from many different tribal nations, including the Lakota, Kiowa, Chippewa, Crow, Nez Perce, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Cherokee.

Over the years, Jackson has traveled from coast to coast, capturing the diverse cultures of many tribes. “When I’m out there photographing,” he said, “I lay things down. I’ll lay food down, and I’ll pray and I’ll talk to the spirits: ‘Thank you for having me here. Thank you for letting me shoot, and thank you for letting me see such beauty.’”

Since the late 1980s, his work has been featured in numerous exhibitions at colleges and museums nationwide. He is now featured in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibition “Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography,” which will end in July. The exhibit showcases pieces from his 1990s series “Indian Man in San Francisco.”

The series focuses on the urban Native experience and the journey of relocation. The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 was part of the U.S. government’s efforts to assimilate American Indians into mainstream culture. A 1953 policy by Congress aimed to eliminate government support for Native tribes and ended the protected trust status of Native American-owned lands.

In response to this policy, the Bureau of Indian Affairs initiated a voluntary urban relocation program, offering housing and employment to those who applied. This led many American Indians to move to large cities. Although the program was intended to provide support, many participants faced unemployment, discrimination and a loss of cultural connections.

“It was a divide-and-conquer technique that the American government used,” Jackson said. “They wanted them to lose their culture, wanted them to lose their ways, wanted them to lose their dances and songs and Indian language.” Natives were sent to major cities, including Oakland, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Seattle, Portland, Oregon and Cleveland.

Much of Jackson’s work revolves around themes of cultural identity, representation and appropriation.

Gallerist Andrew Smith has been representing Jackson and showing his work for nearly 30 years, first in Santa Fe and then in Tucson. He sees Jackson as part of a “great photographic tradition” stretching back to the 1930s.

Documentary photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, who captured Depression-era America for the Farm Security Administration, inspired generations of photographers. “There’s a language that they invented, and Zig is part of that language as well,” Smith said. But, while the great documentary photographers of the 20th century primarily documented events, “Zig is documenting ideas and studying ideas.”

One of Jackson’s mentors in the 1990s, Patrick Nagatani, became known for his directorial style of photography and staging scenes. “One of the great illusions of photography,” Smith said, “is that people look at it and think it represents the truth.” They think a photo “conveys what a camera sees,” he continued, “but the photographer sees something else. Zig exploited that in his artwork.” Smith said Jackson added “performative self-portraiture” to address the themes of sovereignty, tradition, and reclaiming territory.

One of Jackson’s best-known series is “Zig’s Indian Reservation,” which he completed in the 1990s while attending graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute. In these photos, he is seen wearing a headdress and walking around locations like the Golden Gate Bridge and City Hall in San Francisco. His captions often include thought-provoking and sometimes humorous commentary, such as: “I have a Golden Gate Bridge on my reservation. I have to do something about these tourists!”

His photos often reflect irony. In one, a man stands in a field, a tall white feathered headdress cutting a sharp contrast to the skyscrapers behind him. To his left, a sign reads, “Private Property/Open Range Cattle On Highway/No Picture Taking/No Hunting/No Air Traffic/New Agers Prohibited.”

Then, below, “Without Permission From Tribal Council.”

This iconic self-portrait from Jackson’s series “Entering Zig’s Indian Reservation” exhibits the mighty talent that steered him to a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021.

While photographing, Jackson is always moving to capture the perfect moment. His work has garnered several awards, including the Beaumont Newhall Award for Photographic Excellence in 2005, the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Grant in 1997 and the Artist in Residence fellowship at the Headlands Center for the Arts in 1995.

“His career has taught us that we can do anything,” said his younger sister, Clarine DeGroot. “Heck, he hitchhiked off the reservation to become a famous photographer, winning awards and meeting famous artists around the world.”

Jackson has also taught photography to college students in California and Georgia. “He was the most relaxed of people, and his students felt that,” said Steven Bliss, former chair of the photography department at Savannah College of Art and Design, where Jackson taught for 23 years. “And they knew they could trust him.” Bliss said he still occasionally talks to alumni: “They all remember Zig’s classes with a great deal of fondness.”

Initially, DeGroot wasn’t sure what a photographer did or what the job entailed. However, after seeing his work, she was impressed. “His photos showed his feelings and mindset,” she said. “As I got older, it made me understand and realize that life is how we make it.”

Every summer, people on the Fort Berthold Reservation look forward to seeing him when he comes home, said DeGroot. “They can’t wait to see his photos and hear his stories,” she said.

Not only has Jackson brought pride to his tribe, but DeGroot also said they are proud of him for showcasing all the different American Indian cultures.

“Culture is the most powerful thing you have in art,” Jackson said. “And that’s what makes your art strong. And I don’t care if you’re a cowboy or you’re a redneck in Montana. That’s a culture. And you respect that.”

In 2023, Jackson retired from academic teaching at Savannah College of Art and Design, where he holds the honorary title of professor emeritus, a recognition of distinguished academic service. The Society for Photographic Education bestowed him with the 2024 Honored Educator Award for his significant education contributions to photography. Now 68 and living in Georgia, he still aims to hold two annual exhibitions. He is also publishing his first book, which is expected to be released next fall.

In the meantime, Jackson’s upcoming exhibit, “Zig Jackson: The Journey Of The Rising Buffalo,” will be featured this year at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, from May 10 to Nov. 9. The series blends Jackson’s performative and observational styles, demystifying the everyday experiences of American Indian life and culture. The Eastman exhibit focuses on themes of community, sovereignty, and respect for the land.