Before-and-After Portraiture: Photography and Time at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

This paper examines the before-and-after portraits of the Diné student Tom Torlino, which were produced by American photographer John N. Choate at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania between 1882 and 1885. Unlike previous analyses that have focused on the colonial and racial politics of the images, the present study centers the temporality of the portraits and their portrayal of Torlino's dislocation from a Native to a Western regime of time. Specifically, the paper examines three aspects of the imagery. First, it studies how before-and-after photographs reduce multi-year processes to two contrasting images and, second, it analyzes how the pictures portray a dislocation from the non-conventional, non-linear temporality that Torlino experienced as a child to Western time. Finally, it also establishes that the sitter's possession of a watch can be interpreted as a reassertion of agency and individuality amidst an oppressive context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]