Fotomontage/trucage met gevecht tussen kolonisten en oorspronkelijke bewoners van Noord-Amerika in een landschap met huifkar c. 1907 - 1920

This small black and white photograph depicts a battle between colonizers and indigenous people, set in a North American landscape with a covered wagon. It's a charged image, isn't it? I can imagine the artist piecing this together, not from life, but from other images and perhaps from their imagination. There's a strange, constructed feeling about it. I'm thinking about the layered nature of the scene, a kind of collage, where each element – the wagon, the figures, the landscape – is carefully arranged. There's a stark contrast between the settlers, with their guns and covered wagon, and the indigenous people, who are depicted on horseback in a kind of confrontation. The dust and the smoke feel symbolic, like an obscuring of the truth, a clouding of the real history of this encounter. Maybe it's a way to rewrite history, a way to question the narratives we've been told about the Wild West. And isn't that what art should do? Keep the conversation going, even when it's uncomfortable.