Jeremy Dennis
b. 1990
American
(Long Island, New York)
Jeremy Dennis is a contemporary fine art photographer, an enrolled Tribal Member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY, and lead artist and founder of the non-profit Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Inc. on the Shinnecock Reservation. In his work, he explores Indigenous identity, culture, and assimilation.Dennis photography explores indigenous identity, cultural assimilation, and the ancestral traditional practices of my tribe, the Shinnecock Indian Nation.
"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. By looking to the past, I trace issues that plague indigenous communities back to their source. For example, research for my ongoing project “On This Site” entailed studying archaeological and anthropological records, oral stories, and newspaper archives. The resulting landscape photography honors Shinnecock’s 10,000-plus years’ presence in Long Island, New York. Working on that collection has left me with a better understanding of how centuries of treaties, land grabs, and colonialist efforts to white-wash indigenous communities have led to our resilience, our ways of interacting with our environment, and the constant struggle to maintain our autonomy."
In 2013, Jeremy began working on the Stories—Indigenous Oral Stories, Dreams, and Myths series. Inspired by North American Indigenous stories, the artist staged supernatural images that transform these myths and legends into depictions of an actual experience in a photograph.
