Work submitted by Yanglin Cai, Y16, for the composite image assigment in Meredith Miller’s Intermediate Digital Photography class. Cai used an original photo in the Beinecke Library’s collection as a source for the project: http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3437149

About the project, Cai writes: “My composite started from a tintype portrait of Olive Oatman—a woman who was kidnapped by a Native American tribe in the 1850s. While I was initially intrigued by the chin tattoo the Mohave people gave her, I chose not to highlight that aspect in my design.  My image contains a fragment of a flower printed on fabric layered over the face of Olive Oatman. The placement subverts the original image and renders it in an ornamental manner. It becomes less about the historical context and more about the superficial qualities of the image and why we may find them attractive.”