“Arthur Adams(1872-1955) (was a) Minneapolis high school teacher, local historian, and photographer. Adams traveled throughout Minnesota, taking photographs to augment his lectures. His studio was located at 3648 Lyndale Avenue South in Minneapolis.”
- Hennepin History Museum
His studio is now an up-down duplex. Adams documented the present(at the time) landscape of where historical events took place. A more contemporary example is Joel Sternfeld's “On This Site”. Like most scholarship on the history of Minnesota, his landscape photographs focus on the fur trade & the US Dakota War of 1862. Almost, if not all the photographs were taken between 1920 and 1929. They serve as an introduction to the state of Minnesota’s founding and early history, fitting for a high school teacher. Adam’s photographs and my accompanying text will serve as a foundation for much of ‘County Ditch’.
Worth noting is that Adam’s photographed much more than historical landscapes, this project though will only include select photographs chosen for relevancy & occasionally for composition and/or beauty.
Using Adam’s photographs I want to explore two main ideas, most of the United States History, specifically Minnesota’s history, is incredibly recent and technology obscures our ability to recognize that. People, and culture, are not good or evil; people are simultaneously beautiful and terrible.
The reason for starting with Adam’s photographs are numerous but they funnel into one central idea - Adam’s photographs are a survey of Minnesota history, they serve as a starting point for discussion on innumerable topics, people, and places and unlike words they do not prescribe perspective. The bias present is in what he chose to photograph.
They also beg the question, ‘how did the fur trade and the US Dakota War of 1862 shape Minnesota’s landscape and contemporary land use?’
All images retrieved from the Minnesota Digital Library, made possible “through the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, a component of the Minnesota Clean Water, Land and Legacy constitutional amendment, ratified by Minnesota voters in 2008.”
Pike is a recognizable name. In over 10 states Zebulon has landforms, towns, parks, buildings, and even a snow plow named for him. This monument seems a more appropriate testament. Ironically, he failed to summit the famous Colorado peak named for him, and he failed to find the headwaters of the Mississippi. Pike Island on the River is named for him. It's all a little funny. Even funnier is that 15 "registered voters" can propose a name change to any geographic feature in Minnesota. Most notable this was recently done in Minneapolis changing "Lake Calhoun" to "Bde Maka Ska". It gets better too, Minnesota has a statute on the books "Names not to be duplicated". There are 201 Mud Lakes, 154 Long Lakes and 123 Rice Lakes alone. Surely we can be more specific.
The site of Coldwater Camp near Fort Snelling. The Camp started in 1819 for the construction of Fort Snelling, originally called "Fort Saint Anthony". Completed in 1824, the Fort only operated until 1858. It was then sold to the land speculator Franklin Steele whom donated a different parcel of his portfolio to begin the University of Minnesota. Steele was the owner of the land and gained exclusive contracts for provisions while over a thousand Dakota were interned at the Fort. There is a park named for him at 1600 Portland Ave S in Minneapolis.
The home of Alexander Faribault. Faribault is the Dakota-French trader whom Faribault, Minnesota is named. After the Dakota War of 1862, and release from the Fort Snelling internment camp, a village of Wahpekute and Mdewakanton was hosted by Faribault. Most from the internment camp were forced to reservations in Missouri and Kansas, hundreds died en route.
