Regis University ePublications at Regis University All Regis University Theses Spring 2019 Photographing Bioluminescence, Ethics, and Lessons from a Misguided Ethnographer Josephine N. Gruber Regis University Follow this and additional works at: https://epublications.regis.edu/theses Recommended Citation Gruber, Josephine N., "Photographing Bioluminescence, Ethics, and Lessons from a Misguided Ethnographer" (2019). All Regis University Theses. 930. https://epublications.regis.edu/theses/930 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by ePublications at Regis University. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Regis University Theses by an authorized administrator of ePublications at Regis University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i PHOTOGRAPHING BIOLUMINESCENCE, ETHICS, AND LESSONS FROM A MISGUIDED ETHNOGRAPHER A thesis submitted to Regis College The Honors Program in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Graduation with Honors By Josephine N. Gruber May 2019 ii HONORS THESIS APPROVAL PAGE Thesis written by Josephine N. Gruber Approved By Thesis Advisor z,, Accepted By Director, University Honors Program iii iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures & Tables…………………………….………………………...…….vi Acknowledgements………………….......…….…..…………………………...…...vii Preface…………………………………………….…………………………….…...viii Introduction………………………………………………………………………..….1 I. Morphology of the bioluminescent organ in glowbellies (Teleostei: Acropomatidae) in phylogenetic context…………………………..…..….....7 II. Gut morphology and diet analysis of two glowbellies (Teleostei: Acropomatidae) and evolutionary implications……….…………………….26 III. Historical context and ethical implications of the photography of Edward S. Curtis……...……..………………………………………..…..46 IV. Ethical usage of photography in scientific literature and lessons From a misguided ethnographer…………..……………………….....……..93 v LIST OF FIGURES & TABLES Chapter One Figure 1 A-F: Histology of the ventral light organ of A. japonicum………………….14 Figure 2 A-G: Histology of the ventral light organ of A. hanedai…………...……….15 Figure 3: Phylogeny of acropomatiforms and bioluminescence…...…………...…….16 Chapter Two Figure 1: Pyloric ceca orientation numbering scheme………….…………………….33 Figure 2: Dietary composition summary………………...…………………………...35 Figure 3: Total intestinal length compared to standard length…….……....………....36 Figure 4: Shortest caeca length compared to standard length…...……………..…….36 Figure 5: Longest caeca length compared to standard length ….………………….…37 Table 1: Summary of pyloric c..eca morphology and Pearson’s Chi-Square test…....37 Chapter Three Figure 1: A Vanishing Race (1914) – Dixon and Wanamaker…………………….…53 Figure 2: End of the Trail (1918) – James Earle Fraser…………………………...…55 Figure 3: Lodge Interior (1911) - E.S.C. The North American Indian………….…...70 Figure 4: In a Piegan Lodge (1911) – E.S.C. The North American Indian………....71 Figure 5: Lodge Interior (1911) – E.S.C. Library of Congress………………..…….72 Figure 6: The Vanishing Race (1904) – E.S.C. The North American Indian…..……80 Figure 7: Adoration of the Magi (ca. 435CE)…………………………………….…..81 Figure 8: Yellow Bull - Nez Perce (1905) & Nez Perce Warrior (1905) – E.S.C. The North American Indian..….……....87 Figure 9: A.B. Upshaw (1898) – unknown & Upshaw – Apsaroke (1905) – E.S.C. The North American Indian……….…..88 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Mike Ghedotti for his constant support, tutelage, and guidance throughout my collegiate experience and while writing this thesis, as well as collecting samples in Taiwan used in the first and second chapter of this thesis. Funding from the Regis University Research and Scholarship Council and National Science Foundation were imperative to this project. Specimens used in this study were loaned from the Field Museum of Natural History, IL and John Francis Bell Museum of Natural History, MN. I would also like to thank J. Egan for his consultation on this project and assistance in collecting samples in Taiwan. I would like to thank Dr. Cath Kleier for her valuable insight to the project, without which this thesis may have never come to fruition. I would like to thank Dr. Barbara Coleman for her immediate faith in what may have seemed like an outlandish union of art history and contemporary scientific research that she supported from the very beginning. Additional thanks to the Regis University Biology department for use of materials and laboratory facility, as well as the University and Research Scholarship Council (URSC) for providing funding primary research related to this thesis. Thanks to the Dayton Memorial Library, especially Elizabeth Cook with the Thomas J. Tracy Family Foundation Archives and Special Collections for access to primary Curtis materials, as well as her council and support for this thesis. Most importantly, I would like to dedicate this thesis to my family who have supported me through my college journey and have been my sounding board for every page written hereafter. vii Preface Like most people, I had never heard of Edward S. Curtis when I began an art history class about the history of photography. I had never heard of his prolific work: The North American Indian or the dynamic portraits it included. Four months and hundreds of pages of research later, I realized that was a lie. I did know who Edward Curtis and was; and, in fact, I was very familiar with his work. I had done a project in the third grade on the Kwakiutl people of northwestern America. My mom and I cut out the people from a Curtis photograph as part of a diorama, tirelessly making small Play-Doh foods one may find at a Kwakiutl winter potlatch meal. I had completely dedicated myself to that project, constructing mock homes and clothing and even providing my classmates with colorable masks to replicate those often worn at potlatches. Large portions of this effort were based on passages from The North American Indian that I had read while researching the Kwakiutl. It seems like fate now that Curtis would find a place in my thesis. At the same time I was studying Curtis in art history, I was also compiling and creating figures for a biology research publication I had begun as a Freshman. I immediately fell in love with the visual nature of morphological biology and subsequently became fascinated with evolutionary biology by way of this research. My lab notebook quickly filled with anatomical measurements and observations of specimens as I prepared to remove tissue samples for closer analysis. It became an inside joke among my friends that I could always be found in the lab while working on a tissue sample preparation and staining protocol. When complete, I had the opportunity to use viii my experience with graphic design and photography to create attractive figures by photographing the slides I had prepared. I worked to create the perfect figure for the publication, tirelessly tweaking the colors and contrast until what I saw through the microscope matched what I saw on my computer screen. In that moment, I could see the ghost of Curtis meticulously arranging the scene of a photograph, removing and replacing items to recreate a vision he wanted to capture on those beautiful glass-plate negatives. To him, it would have seemed like we were the same. Scientists. Photographers. Trying to show the world what we see. He would not have seen the longstanding ramifications that his edits would make. He did not see that removing an alarm clock in one photo and giving his subjects the same feather headdress time and again was actually constructing an image to suit his own preconceived ideas - one that would follow millions of Native Americans through to the present. He did not know that his views followed a Social Darwinist agenda that would prompt society then, as now, to use his work to falsely justify exploitation and injurious treatment of Native Americans. Despite the efforts of scientists today to debunk the pseudoscience of Social Darwinism, evidence of its subliminal influence is not difficult to find in modern politics and popular culture. To someone Like Curtis, who was steeped in the prevailing assumptions of Social Darwinism, it would have seemed the expected result of evolutionary processes that native cultures faced obsolescence and decline in the face of white, colonial conquest. As deplorable as this conclusion seems to most people now, almost everyone around Curtis saw Native Americans simply as living fossils of a bygone American era that must pass into history, as all organisms must when individuals with genes better suited to the environment are present. Removing a small alarm clock, ix by that logic, was a small-scale choice just as serious to Curtis as decreasing color saturation was a small-scale choice for me. He did not see that such a choice was perpetuating the notion that Native American culture was stuck in the past and its extinction, therefore, was imminent. Curtis himself wrote in the figure description for The Vanishing Race, the very first photograph in Folio I of The North American Indian that, “The Indians, as a race...are passing into the darkness of an unknown future,” and goes on to say that this sentiment was the primary motivator for the entirety of his work (Curtis, 1907). I hope the reader will, at times, have as much difficulty reading the words of Curtis as I did in writing them. Regrettably, this idea about ‘the Vanishing Race’, as he put it, was pervasive the world over at the time he was working. It is hard to see how people once