Portraits of Native America

NATIVE AMERICANS 

 

Edward S. Curtis is the big name here / amazing visual ethnographic work / over 40,000 photos of people / 80 Indian tribes 

colossal project financed by J. P. Morgan /  Curtis didn't get a salary / mostly forgotten later

 

The North American Indian series was a project of epic proportions / president Theodore Roosevelt wrote the foreword of the first volume / said about Curtis   

He is an artist who works out of doors and not in the closet. He is a close observer, whose qualities of mind and body fit him to make his observations out in the field, surrounded by the wild life he commemorates. He has lived on intimate terms with many different tribes of the mountains and the plains. He knows them as they hunt, as they travel, as they go about their various avocations on the march and in the camp. He knows their medicine men and sorcerers, their chiefs and warriors, their young men and maidens. He has not only seen their vigorous outward existence, but has caught glimpses, such as few white men ever catch, into that strange spiritual and mental life of theirs;

and Curtis wrote about himself 

While primarily a photographer, I do not see or think photographically; hence the story of Indian life will not be told in microscopic detail, but rather will be presented as a broad and luminous picture. And I hope that while our extended observations among these brown people have given no shallow insight into their life and thought, neither the pictures nor the descriptive matter will be found lacking in popular interest.

some critics say that he staged the photos / does this really matter? / show me the alternative = no photos / and he described them as "broad and luminous" / who cares about some art added to the images

[ CONTEXT ] = ethnography / history / Native Americans / photography / books