A Piegan Play Tipi , 1926

When Edward S. Curtis created his huge master work, The North American Indian, he combined a nostalgic artistic style of photography with a mission to record, in scientifically acceptable form, the appearance and customs of as many remnant native groups to whom he could gain access. The project lasted from 1905 to 1930, and he eventually published more than two thousand photographic images. For the most part these are the familiar single portraits or groups, but there is a surprising variety of other subjects. He explained his intent in a letter to Pierpont Morgan: “The plan in mind is to make a complete publication, showing pictures and including text of every phase of Indian life of all tribes yet in a primitive condition… their home structure, their environment, their handicraft, games, ceremonies, etc.”

Curtis was driven by two sometimes conflicting motivations: to produce art of the highest caliber and to scientifically record objective fact. Curtis's photographs of dwellings and structures fall between his two agendas and imply a third, underlying motivation that informs the entire project.

To make an Indian into an object of legend and myth, as Pictorialism required, it was more or less easy to manipulate the situation, and photograph him or her in ceremonial regalia against a neutral background or simple landscape, devoid of contemporary information. In this way, the Indian loses individuality and becomes an actor in the Pictorialist drama decrying the effects of industrialization on non-Indians. But an actual dwelling exists in the present and is bound to give evidence of adaptation, appropriation, and cultural adjustment for survival. While the dwelling imagery was motivated by the cold-eyed scientific need to document cultural evidence, these structures are compellingly human. In most cases Curtis camped in the same settlement as his subjects, sharing food and water and extremes of heat and cold. Curtis's third agenda was to fulfill a commitment of profound respect for the people he met, and to explore and substantiate a personal conviction that Indians were in a real conflict between preserving their original culture and surviving by adapting to a new one.

Broken out as a group, the structure photographs in The North American Indian demonstrate the real variety of cultural groups that Curtis managed to visit. They become their own typological study of the possibilities for surviving – and being comfortable in – the spectrum of environment of the American West. The structures that Curtis recorded represent technological refinement and efficiency on a par with the flashier accomplishments of the culture that overwhelmed them.

Curtis's artistic motivation seeks to celebrate Indians as rural, feudal, and spiritual – authentic, even archetypal antidotes to the effects of industrialization. His pictures of dwellings, however, tell another story of a living present in danger of disappearance. The people, for the most part, have survived. Some, like the Hopi, Tewa, and Navajo, still live in their traditional homes however altered by modern convenience. Others recreate traditional structures for ceremonial occasions. But many of the structures Curtis found on his travels now exist only as photographic images. They have vanished along with intricate languages and cosmologies.

-- Rod Slemmons, from the essay to the exhibition catalog

A hard cover exhibition catalog is available for this exhibition

Number of photographs: 46
Frame sizes:
15 frames @ 20x24 inches
31 frames @ 14x18 inches
Linear feet: 150
Rental fee: $4800 for 8 weeks

ADDITIONAL IMAGES FROM THE SHOW

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