$40.00 U.S. (Short discount; trade discounts available for bulk sales)
E-book TBD.
Hardcover
104 pages with 65 four-color plates by the author and 1 map = 66
10.0″ x 8.5″ landscape
ISBN: 978-1-938086-89-2
Published in June 2022
Distributed by Casemate/IPM
www.casemateipm.com
Published in association with the Center for the Study of Place.
Events and Exhibitions
March through June 2, 2024
Exhibition: Unearthing
Danforth Art Museum (see images from and read about the show)
November 21, 2023 at 6:30 pm
Presentation by Sandra Matthews and David Brule Sunderland Public Library, Sunderland, MA
April 28, 2023 at noon
Book talk with Matthews and Brule
Amherst Historical Society
April 12, 2023 at 2pm
Book talk with Matthews and Brule
Greenfield Community College Senior Symposium
Garden Cinemas, 61 Main Street, Greenfield, MA
April 6 – May 30, 2023
Occupying Massachusetts: Layers of History on Indigenous Land
on view in Room 428, a meeting room used by the Massachusetts State Senate
May 30 at 1:30 pm, Sandra Matthews (photographer) and David Brule (Indigenous activist and essayist) will speak about the book and the issues it raises in Room 428 at the State House, 24 Beacon Street, Boston, MA
February 21, 2023 at 7pm
Book talk with Matthews and Brule
Partnership of Historic Bostons
Joint presentations by Sandra Matthews and David Brule: September 18, 2022 at 2pm
Great Falls Discovery Center, Turners Falls, MA
September 22, 2022 at 6:30 pm
Zoom presentation hosted by Kestrel Land Trust.
October 2, 2022 at 2pm
Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield, MA
September 24, 2022 at 11:30 am
Panel presentation by Sandra Matthews, Green Mountain Book Festival, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, VT
by Sandra Matthews
with texts by David Brule and Suzanne Gardinier
Winner of 2023 Gold Medal IPPY Award for Best Regional Book of Non-Fiction for the Northeast
Occupying Massachusetts: Layers of History on Indigenous Land is an art book that engages with history and memory. Sandra Matthews’s subtle photographs of vernacular structures and historic sites offer a uniquely personal meditation on the human occupation of land, with an emphasis on the long presence of Indigenous people, whose lands have been transformed by people coming here from all over the world since the early 1600s.
Utilizing a muted color palette, the photographs suggest the presence of deep histories that are embedded in the landscape but often are invisible. Although the book focuses on Massachusetts, it implicitly raises larger issues of settlement and conquest, nationhood and identity. How did the United States of America come to occupy its land? How is this story of occupation remembered and rendered, by whom and for whom? As a longtime occupant/occupier of Massachusetts herself, Matthews aims to understand more deeply the land on which she lives.
The main text of the book comes from her photographs of historic markers, which were installed around the state at different times by different interest groups. The words on these markers describe early relations between Indigenous people and largely English settlers, from diverse points of view. In this way, the book explores how difficult and differing histories are written and told and how those stories change over time. This theme is carried forward in essays by Indigenous activist David Brule and writer Suzanne Gardinier, who suggest how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people can reconcile the past.
Occupying Massachusetts is a profound reflection on the complex meanings of home and of place. Its insights about landscape, history, and memory will be appreciated for years to come.
Read an extensive feature on the book in the Partnership of Historic Bostons blog (2023)
Sandra Matthews (photographer) and David Brule (Indigenous activist and essayist) presentation 2023
About
About the Author
Sandra Matthews is a photographer who, from 1982 to 2016, was a faculty member at Hampshire College. Her previous books are Present Moments (self-published, 2020) and Pregnant Pictures, co-authored with Laura Wexler (Routledge, 2000). In 2010, she founded The Trans Asia Photography Review, which she edited until 2020. Matthews’s photographs are in numerous collections, including the Addison Gallery of American Art, Harvard University Art Museums, Henry Art Gallery, Portland (Oregon) Art Museum, Smith College Museum of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Women in Photography International Archive at Yale University.
About the Contributors
David Brule was born and raised in Montague, Massachusetts, and is of Nehantic, Narragansett, and Huron/Wendat descent. He is President of the Nolumbeka Project, Inc., whose mission in part is “to promote a deeper, broader, and more accurate depiction of the history of the Native Americans/American Indians of the Northeast before and during European contact and colonization.”
Suzanne Gardinier was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and grew up in Scituate. She teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College and is the author of a dozen books of poetry, fiction, and essays, including The New World (Pittsburgh, 1993), which was awarded the 1992 Associated Writing Program’s Award Series in Poetry. She is also a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.
Slide Show
Praise
“A beautiful volume to browse through one fascinating and informative page at a time, Occupying Massachusetts: Layers of History on Indigenous Land is a moving story whose message will be appreciated for years to come—and could well served as a template for similar historical studies of other American states. Simply stated, Occupying Massachusetts: Layers of History on Indigenous Land is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, community, college, and university library American History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.”
—Paul T. Vogel, The Midwest Book Review
“Most of the things depicted in this book of site photography seem barely attached to the ground, or about to fall over. Heavy-looking rock monuments, attempting to convey a fixed history, seem more like imported thought bubbles, and the buildings, in this normally deep-rooted land of Massachusetts, are depicted here as temporary sheds and flimsy, disintegrating ephemera. The flotsam of occupation. Another entry in the lengthening line up of publisher George F. Thompson’s output, which spans decades and includes some of the best books about places out there.”
—The Lay of the Land, newsletter for the Center for Land Use Interpretation
“Your book is marvelous—great pictures and moving and poignant in concept. It provides much to think about, and I hope that many people will see and learn from it.”
—Keith F. Davis, author of The Origins of American Photography (Yale University Press, 2007); former senior curator of Photography, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
“Thank you for sharing your work, Sandra. Occupying Massachusetts is a striking composition of images and words, lending a gleam of light into long stories that linger on the periphery. They’re always there, next to us, but are seldom seen full frontal—it’s more, rather, that they are sensed. Your juxtapositions enable the clarity that can come when, for example, you can see a hazy star more distinctly by looking next to it, rather than directly at it.”
—Rich Holschuh, Cultural Relations Liaison for the Elnu Abenaki Tribe
“The places on which we stand flicker with the subtle traces of peoples who have come before us. In this moving book, Sandra Matthews asks us to look—really look—at the relationship between us and them and meditate on what such things as possession, occupation, and settlement might mean. Her photographs are haunting and also disturbingly beautiful.”
—Anthony W. Lee, Idella Plimpton Kendall Professor of Art History at Mt. Holyoke College, author of seven books about art and photography, and founder/editor of the acclaimed book series Defining Moments in American Photography
“This is a beautiful and valuable book. The opening epigraph alone—about a place never belonging to one group—should be forwarded to Vladimir Putin, as it is so appropriate regarding the war in Ukraine. Once I opened the book, I was hooked. Its theme—occupation, conquest, and layers of history on Indigenous lands—exposes many truths. The book will thus be forever relevant. I totally admire the artist’s vision!”
—Andrei Kushnir, author of Oh, Shenandoah: Paintings of the Historic Valley and River
My Place
The feeling of connection to a particular place is often a matter of nostalgia, longing, or fantasy. As more and more people worldwide are forced to migrate, “connection in absentia” will be increasingly the norm.
© Photograph by Sandra Matthews.
As a child, I moved from place to place frequently as my parents, who were recent immigrants to the U.S., found their way on a new continent. As a family, we cultivated the ability to create a feeling of “home” wherever we found ourselves.
As an adult, I have chosen to live in one house in one neighborhood in one town for almost four decades. But my house contains objects, images, and printed matter that connect me to many other people and places. I feel very fortunate to be able to surround myself, in one space, with fragments from these many worlds.
Copyright © 2021 Sandra Matthews. All rights reserved.