Ex. 1 Read the text. A passionate amateur photographer, Vincent Soboleff went everywhere with his camera, capturing snapshots of tribal dances

A passionate amateur photographer, Vincent Soboleff went everywhere with his camera, capturing snapshots of tribal dances, church services and factory lunch breaks. His photographs document the area’s inhabitants both at work – hauling fish over the side of a boat – and at play, celebrating the Fourth of July.

There were other photographers working in southeastern Alaska at the time, both commercial and amateur. But they tended to stage exotic shots bemoaning the tragic, yet seemingly inevitable demise of Indian culture; the mournful Indians were often played by white men, made up and wrapped in ceremonial garb.

As a local teenager, Vincent Soboleff had an ideal vantage point from which to capture the community’s true inner workings. In his shots, people play the fiddle and the guitar, smoke fish and pick crabapples; his sister Vera stands playfully on top of a dead whale. He also identified his native subjects by name – highly unusual at the time.

However, tensions lurked behind the photographs’ scenes of easy socializing. “Sokoloff had a reputation of a heavy drinker and was criticized by his church superiors for drinking and ‘fraternizing’ with the Indians,” said DartmouthUniversity anthropologist Sergei A. Kan who was behind the publication of the book.

The photos also reveal an emerging set of cultural schisms: at a Tlingit grave ceremony, European-style marble headstones stand alongside painted wooden poles. In a shot of Chief Kichnaalx’s family at home, his wife is wearing a puffy-shouldered European-style dress.

In the late 1910s, Father Soboleff died, bringing his son’s amateur photography career to an end. Vincent began working as a mailman to support the family, and left his camera at home. In 1928, a fire devastated the community and he moved to nearby Angoon, where he ran a general store until his death in the 1950s.

Though several of his photos were printed on local postcards, where they were tinted into color, Soboleff’s work remained obscure for decades. After his death, his sister donated 780 plate negatives to the Alaska State Library, where they remain today.

Kan has been doing ethnographic research in Angoon since 1980. He has spoken with relatives of many of the people who appear in Soboleff’s photos. “They are of great interest to the local native people themselves,” he said.

Some of Angoon’s 800 to 900 residents are still Russian Orthodox. Though they don’t speak Russian, Kan said, “The descendants of these people are still around, and preserve the memories and the stories of their ancestors.”