Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian, Incorporated (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture)

By Mick Gidley

Book Overview

From the 1890s onward, Edward S. Curtis took thousands of photographs of Native Americans all over the West. These were published (1907-1930) in twenty volumes of illustrated text and twenty portfolios of photographs; the project was supported by Theodore Roosevelt and funded in part by J. Pierpont Morgan, and spawned exhibitions, postcards, magazine articles, lecture series, a musicale, and the very first narrative documentary film. Neither a eulogy to Curtis' achievement nor a debunking of it, this book is an honest study of the project as a collective whole.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521775736
• ISBN13: 9780521775731
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

a great photographer

For those who have long admired Curtis' classic photos of Native Americans, but who have wondered to know more about Curtis himself, Gidley provides good background. He laboriously traces Curtis' life and habits. The prediliction for outdoors living is a constant theme of the book. Combined with his skills at photography. We see early experiences in studio photography. But Curtis seemed (luckily to history) to find that somewhat confining. His subsequent travels throughout the American West brought his interests and talents into sharp focus. Letting him document what was believed to be a dying way of life. Which was perhaps largely true. Most of the natives in his photographs were no longer the plains nomads of American folklore. This book does not reproduce many of Curtis' photos. Largely because you can find those elsewhere. Gidley concentrates on the details of his life.

Excellent work on Curtis

This is an excellent series of discussions of the many different aspects of E.S. Curtis and his photographic and ethnographic project on the North American Indian. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in both background history of Curtis and his project, as well as an interesting interpretive perspective on Curtis and his work.