Oregon’s Trail of Tears
Oregon’s Trail of Tears
Oregon’s Trail of Tears
On the morning of February 22nd, 1856, U.S. Indian Agent George H. Ambrose carried out his orders from General Joel Palmer to forcefully remove and march several hundred indigenous men, women, and children from their aboriginal homeland in Southern Oregon to a Reservation in the Mid-Willamette Valley 263 miles away. This thirty-two-day journey was filled with deceit, suffering, death, and murder.
Nolan started this project with several years of preparation and research, reading through thousands of historical letters, looking over old survey maps from the 1850s, and utilizing satellite imagery from today. He was able to retrace the entire route and locate bygone roads that are no longer in existence while following others that are still here today. Nolan made these photographs using an antique wooden view camera and the wet plate collodion photo process from the 1850s and paired them with the journal entries written in the same time period. These landscape photographs illustrate the fraught expedition that Ambrose detailed in his daily journal. These imperfect photos play off the serendipitous technical flaws to create ghostly images that echo the grim history of the past and capture the forgotten and seldom told story of Oregon’s “Trail of Tears.”
About the Artist
Nolan Streitberger is an artist in Albany Oregon working in the medium of photography. He first learned photography while attending Oregon State University's JumpstART program, a pre-college of the arts for high school students. Nolan holds degrees in Graphic Design and Digital Imaging & Prepress Technologies. It wasn't until he and his wife had their daughter and Nolan was laid off from his graphic design job at Hewlett Packard that he rediscovered himself as an artist. He utilizes digital photography, film, and alternative process shooting with the wet plate collodion, the photographic process from the 1850's, on an antique wooden large format view camera.
Nolan has been selected as a Critical Mass 2023 finalist with his ongoing project “Oregon's Trail of Tears”. This project has been awarded grants from The Oregon Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Kinsman Foundation. Nolan has previously been featured in Musee Magazine, Der Spiegel, Bento, ZEITjUNG, Flavorwire, Edge of Humanity Magazine, and SHOTS Magazine and has been selected for recognition by the Smithsonian Photography Awards and the Palm Springs Photo Festival. He has exhibited at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland Oregon, Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver, PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury Vermont, and LoosenArt in Millepiani Gallery in Rome Italy.
