Native Americans: Portraits From a Century Ago by Edward Curtis

Very interesting photographs, thanks for sharing.

One has to admire the determination and fortitude of the early pioneers of photography, who often needed a horse-drawn wagon or a team of assistants to carry their equipment to outdoor locations.

It makes me smile where I hear modern-day snappers complaining at the weight of camera bags containing merely a camera body and a couple of lenses.... (!)
 
I'm a fan of Mr. Curtis's work, first saw it at a gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Got a couple of books with his photographs since then.

But I've never seen some of these photos, so thanks for sharing!
 
Thank you for the link.

One of my favorites. I have a very large format book of his photographs and a couple of others on my bookshelf as well as a reproduction of his Chief Joseph portrait hanging by my desk.
There is a very recent biography on Curtis by Timothy Egan that I am enjoying at the moment.
 
THE movie to see about Edward Curtis is called 'The Shadow Catcher', directed by Teri McLuhen, and the 'voice' of Curtis was done by Donald Sutherland. Much better and more heartfelt than the American Masters production.
 
The images are controversial in the Native American community because they are sometimes seen as fabrications, a buttressing of the "noble savage" stereotype. The images romanticized reality. Curtis had no investment in historical accuracy - he traveled with trunks of props and costumes in case he needed to hype up the drama. He saw nothing wrong with having individuals from one tribe wear "costumes" from another tribe. The "reality" he tried to depict was long gone. It's a little disconcerting to see these beautiful but also sentimental depictions of the few survivors of a mass genocide, all dolled up for the camera. Other photographers of Curtis's era, such as Frank Matsura, were much more sensitive to the real lives of their Native American subjects.
 
mortalenema said:
Yes, he staged quite a few of his photos, but saying it was entirely fictitious is a bit much. Unless you don't believe Native Americans are real...
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The individuals were real, the reality they lived during that period was quite different. The world Curtis created in his images was pretty much a fiction; an sentimental evocation of the past as he imagined it.
 
The images are even more beautiful in person. I worked in a gallery years ago that had a sizable Curtis collection. They were exquisite. Staged? Some. But the scenes, culture depicted are real.
 
Another photographer of the Native Americans of the Southwest was A.C. Vroman. He worked in the period of 1895-1905. He was known for photographing the Indians as people of that time. I am unaware of any staging in his photographs beyond that required by the films of the time. I stumbled on him in the mid-1960's when I found the book listed below. Google lists lots of A C Vroman informaton. The bookstore he founded in Pasadena, California is still in business.

Vro*man, A. C. Pho*tog*ra*pher of the South*west: Adam Clark Vro*man, 1856–1916. Edited by Ruth L. Mahood with the assis*tance of Robert A. Wein*stein. Intro*duc*tion by Beau*mont Newhall. [Los Ange*les]: Ward Ritchie Press, 1961.

--Frank
 
Love the shallow depth of field and uncorrected aberrations of those early large format lenses. Reminds me a bit of the Noctilux F1.
 
Pablito said:
The individuals were real, the reality they lived during that period was quite different. The world Curtis created in his images was pretty much a fiction; an sentimental evocation of the past as he imagined it.
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Lighten up Francis.

All photographers optimize their subjects. The guy that photographed the child workers in the textile mills for example. But that doesn't mean the textile mills were a fiction. Indians lived where he photographed them. They used most of the items in the pictures. They understood riding horses or cooking bread in a horno oven, even if most of the time they walked and cooked in a dutch oven in their pueblo.

Spin down off your hate and realize Curtis was trying, in his own way, to respect them. Most are closeup portraits without any accouterments anyway. He could have dressed them up in 3 piece suits and bowler hats and had them sitting in a Model T, but he didn't. The subjects actually liked the pictures he took of them, and allowed more because of his respect.
 
Pablito said:
... It's a little disconcerting to see these beautiful but also sentimental depictions of the few survivors of a mass genocide, all dolled up for the camera. ....
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You see what you want to see. Its a little disconcerting that the Nazis didn't bother taking sentimental pictures of the millions of Jews they gassed to death in 5 years. Or the Japanese of their Chinese victims. Or millions in Stalin' purges. Or Bosnia, or Rowanda....or....The Indian populations were decimated by no immunity to European diseases over several hundred years. That not really "mass genocide." I get tired of people ignoring human nature throughout time has always been brutal. America has been one of the least so. Even the Indians enslaved, raided, and killed each other before the white man. Ever seen the research on where the Anasazi went, and why?
 
Pablito said:
The images are controversial in the Native American community because they are sometimes seen as fabrications, a buttressing of the "noble savage" stereotype. The images romanticized reality. Curtis had no investment in historical accuracy - he traveled with trunks of props and costumes in case he needed to hype up the drama. He saw nothing wrong with having individuals from one tribe wear "costumes" from another tribe. The "reality" he tried to depict was long gone. It's a little disconcerting to see these beautiful but also sentimental depictions of the few survivors of a mass genocide, all dolled up for the camera. Other photographers of Curtis's era, such as Frank Matsura, were much more sensitive to the real lives of their Native American subjects.
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From Wikipedia (with further source, one of the books about him):
"222 complete sets were eventually published. Curtis' goal was not just to photograph, but to document, as much American Indian (Native American) traditional life as possible before that way of life disappeared. He wrote in the introduction to his first volume in 1907: "The information that is to be gathered ... respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost." Curtis made over 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Indian language and music. He took over 40,000 photographic images from over 80 tribes. He recorded tribal lore and history, and he described traditional foods, housing, garments, recreation, ceremonies, and funeral customs. He wrote biographical sketches of tribal leaders, and his material, in most cases, is the only written recorded history although there is still a rich oral tradition that documents history."

I doubt that a person who put that much effort on a project did not truly respect and in absolute fascination with the subjects, be it the culture or the people.

And in the end, he didn't die as a millionaire from this project.
 
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