Jeremy Dennis - "Noobs, Flanders, NY" Framed 18x24 Photograph

Nobbs is a creek now known as "Goose Creek" in Flanders, part of Southampton Town, flowing into the Great Peconic Bay.In a written testimony written in 1660, Corchaug Sachem Paucamp describes five creeks along the Peconic Bay – the second being Nobbs.Nobbs may be an abbreviation of a longer name, possibly relating to a local white-fish used by indigenous inhabitants for fertilizing land.

18 x 24

Archival Giclee Print

My photography explores indigenous identity, cultural assimilation, and the ancestral traditional practices of my tribe, the Shinnecock Indian Nation. Though science has solved many questions about natural phenomena, questions of identity are more abstract, the answers more nuanced. My work is a means of examining my identity and the identity of my community, specifically the unique experience of living on a sovereign Indian reservation and the problems we face.

 My images question and disrupt the post-colonial narrative that dominates in film and media and results in damaging stereotypes, such as the “noble savage” depictions. As racial divisions and tensions reach a nationwide fever pitch, it’s more important to me than ever to offer a complex and compelling representation of indigenous people.

- Jeremy Dennis