Famend researcher of the Southeast provides lecture on ebook following historic photographer of Tlingit Sitkans

A photographer who documented Tlingit neighborhood and tradition in Sitka within the early twentieth century is the topic of a brand new ebook.  

Dartmouth anthropologist Sergei Kan gave a lecture for the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau this previous Tuesday (11-18-25) on his ebook masking the works of famend photographer Elbridge W. Merrill.

Merrill moved to Southeast Alaska from Massachusetts in 1898, and lived in Sitka for 30 years, documenting Tlingit neighborhood members and tradition within the area  at a time when authorities and missionary efforts to repress Tlingit ceremonies and language had been prevalent. Kan says Merrill’s capacity to powerfully seize the spirit and lifetime of the Tlingit folks by his images earned him the nickname “the father of pictures.”

Kan says one cause Merrill was extra profitable together with his photos than  different European American photographers on the time is partly as a result of he was capable of combine with, and earn the belief of, the neighborhood. 

“He was somebody special, highly respected by [the] native and non-native Sitka community,” stated Kan. “And then Leslie Yaw, who was the superintendent of the Sheldon Jackson School, who came to Sitka 1923 [and] knew Merrill. [He] reminisced that, unlike quite a few white people in town in the 20s and 30s, who still had a kind of a racial prejudice, Merrill did not. He was known for his openness.”

Additionally, not like different photographers who romanticized and fetishized Tlingit folks, tradition, and tragedy below colonialism, Kan claims that Merrill cared to precisely seize the fun, nuances, and lived realities of the folks he photographed, citing a few of Merrill’s images to assist his argument. 

“For instance, Edward Curtis, the nice photographer whom we admire however … we all know that he even generally dressed native folks in clothes they not wore, or used wigs to indicate that they had been, ‘wild’ or ‘savage’ or no matter. ‘Traditional,’” said Kan. “Merrill never did that. And in fact, you could see the couple on the right [in this photo] are very nicely dressed in what was the fashion of the time. And I think those kinds of portraits were equally important.”

Kan says he collaborated with clan leaders, elders, and community members to accurately identify Merrill’s topics in his ebook, with lots of his pals and collaborators in attendance. For Kan, he felt it was vital to do that work in order that his ebook might be fascinating and related to Tlingit readers.

“And I at all times cringe once I see {a photograph} that claims ‘unidentified Native American,’” said Kan. “And one time I even saw a picture of Mark Jacobs in some fancy art books of photographs of Southeast Alaska [which] said ‘unidentified American Indian.’ I’m like, ‘that’s a person I do know.’”

Kan’s lecture in Juneau was a part of a collection of lectures Sealaska Heritage Institute hosted for Native American Heritage Month. He can be giving the identical presentation in Sitka on Saturday (11-22-25) on the Sitka National Historical Park, in addition to one other speak titled “Memory Eternal” on the Russian Bishop’s House on the identical day.