The Master Prints

by Edward S. Curtis

Edward S. Curtis was the greatest photographer of Native Americans that this country has ever produced. Curtis photographed more than eighty Native American tribes at what for many was the penultimate moment of their existence in a period spanning more than three decades. Seen in Curtis's photographs, these are peoples of free-reining spirit set in the vastness of a primal continent. Included are a selection of Curtis's master prints, which have never been seen before, and other prints that comprised Curtis's last great exhibition, mounted in 1906 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Donated to the Peabody Essex Museum in 1906, these prints have never been exhibited since. This selection of photographs, which survive intact from almost one hundred years ago, proves that Curtis was not only a great photographer but also one of the most important artists ever produced in America. With this book, accompanied by a radical reappraisal of Curtis's work and place in American art by photographic historian Clark Worswick, Edward Curtis joins the ranks of John James Audubon, whose works on a uniquely American natural history subject admit no contemporary comparison.

Genres: Art

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Beginning in 1900 and continuing over the next thirty years, Edward Sheriff Curtis, or the “Shadow Catcher” as he was later called by some of the tribes, took over 40,000 images and recorded rare ethnographic information from over eighty American Indian tribal groups, ranging from the Eskimo or Inuit people of the far north to the Hopi people of the Southwest. He captured the likeness of many important and well-known Indian people of that time, including Geronimo, Chief Joseph, Red Cloud, Medicine Crow and others. This monumental accomplishment is comprised of more than 2,200 sepia toned photogravures bound in twenty volumes of written information and small images and twenty portfolios of larger artistic representations.

Edward S. Curtis was born near Whitewater, Wisconsin in 1868. His father, a Civil War veteran and a Reverend, moved the family to Minnesota, where Edward became interested in photography and soon constructed his own camera and learned how to process the prints. At the age of seventeen he became an apprentice photographer in St. Paul. The family moved near Seattle, Washington, where Edward purchased a second camera and bought a half interest in a photographic studio. He married and the couple had four children.

In 1898 while photographing on Mt. Rainier, Curtis encountered a group of prominent scientists who were lost, among them George Bird Grinnell, a noted Indian expert, who became interested in Curtis’ work and invited him to photograph the Blackfeet Indian people in Montana two years later. It was there that Curtis practiced and developed his photographic skills and project methodology that would guide his lifetime of work among the other Indian tribes.

Such a massive project is almost incomprehensible in this day and age. In addition to the constant struggle for financing, Curtis required the cooperation of the weather, vehicles, mechanical equipment, skilled technicians, scholars and researchers and the Indian tribes as well. He dispatched assistants to make tribal visits months in advance. With the proper arrangements Curtis would travel by horseback or horse drawn wagon over paths or primitive “roads” to visit the tribes in their home territory. Once on site Curtis and his assistants would start work by interviewed the people and then photographing them either outside, in a structure, or inside his studio tent with an adjustable skylight. Employing these and other techniques over his lifetime he captured some of the most beautiful images of the Indian people ever recorded.

One of Curtis’ major goals was to record as much of the people’s way of traditional life as possible. Not content to deal only with the present population, and their arts and industries, he recognized that the present is a result of the past, and the past dimension must be included, as well. Guided by this concept, Curtis made 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Indian language and music. In addition he took over 40,000 images from over 80 tribes, recorded tribal mythologies and history, and described tribal population, traditional foods, dwellings, clothing, games, ceremonies, burial customs, biographical sketches and other primary source information: all from a living as well as past tradition. Extending the same principle to the photographs, he presented his subjects in a traditional way whenever possible and even supplied a bit of the proper clothing when his subjects had none. Reenactments of battles, moving camp, ceremonies and other past activities were also photographed. These efforts provided extended pleasure to the elders and preserve a rare view of the earlier ways of the people.

With the publication of volume twenty in 1930, the years of struggle finally took their toll with Curtis suffering a physical and nervous break down. The declining interest in the American Indian, the Great depression, and other negative forces slowed, then halted the successful financial completion of the project. Less than 300 sets

Reviews

[Lin F · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read the afterword if you want the perspective of a Native American on Edward Curtis's art, it's more favorable than that of the ethnologists. I give it five stars because the photographs are beautiful and the faces are unforgettable. Having read Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis, I understand the significance of Curtis's project.

[A · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a quote in the appreciation by Clark Worswick which is a summation of Curtis's work:

It is essential to note in any appraisal of the work of Edward Curtis that in his Indian photographs the reworking of history for the visually dramatic photographic effect became acceptable. In his use of both history and ethnography, Curtis’s point of view was perhaps only a bit more exaggerated than that of his contemporaries. In Curtis’s case, his artistry, or his historical vanity, depending upon one’s point of view, and his romantic vision of Native American history are mixed up inextricably with documentary fact. The result is that, in reading Curtis’s photographs, all facts and history are relative to Curtis’s responsibility to a higher artistic truth. For the viewer who insists on the example of an exact documentary truth, the work of Edward Curtis is like walking into a quicksand bog. In a landscape of the imagination, there is no true north.

One cannot help but be subjective in their viewing of any work. In the case of Edward S. Curtis, we are told that these are great works of art, and implied in this statement, we are stupid if we don't appreciate them. I can't warm up to these photographs. This makes me stupid and maybe a heretic.