Page 57 - Expanded Photography

Expanded Photography Bob Cotton 57/146
Edward Sherriff Curtis: The North American Indian 1907.
There were several grand ethnographic-photographic projects around this time – Curtis’s North
American Indian, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky’s Colour photo-documentary of the Russian
Empire (1909), and Albert Kahn’s ambitious Archive of the Planet (1908). It is true that all these pho-
tographers were recording fleeting moments in cultures that were soon to be changed by modern-
ity, but with Curtis you know that he was recording the last vestiges of a sophisticated nation-wide
culture, dying-out as a result of the impact of white immigration spreading out across the USA, the
mass slaughter of the Beaver and Buffalo, of disease and ethnic cleansing. Several movies sym-
pathetically treat of this impact: Little Big Man (Arthur Penn 1970), Dances with Wolves (Kevin
Costner 1990), Jeremiah Johnson (Sydney Pollack 1972). Dee Brown’s exceptional, heart-breaking,
written history of native Americns in the late 19th century: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970),
was the seminal example of the new histories being written about the Wild West (in response to the
change in sensibility provoked by the hippie counter-culture. An award-winning mini-series of Bury
My Heart at Wounded Knee by Yves Simoneau, was made in 2007. Curtis’ magnificent collection,
over 70,000 images made during 1903-1930 remains as a silent witness to what we lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_S._Curtis
Although previously painters like George Catlin (Catlin’s Indian Gallery collection of paintings, 1839) in America, and George Lindauer (in New Zealand - his Maori at Home portraits of 1886) had recognised and attempted to record in oil-painting the threatened native tribal peoples of parts of the colonised world, it was Photography that became the favoured medium of anthropologists and ethnographers in the 20th century.But there were problems - the same kind of issues faced by early film documentarists:
“The North American Indian is a seminal and controversial blend of documentary and staged pho- tography — one which contributes to much of the foundational imagery and, often-stereotypical, understanding possessed by white America about some 82-plus native tribes that the United States eradicated over a century of colonization. Much has been made about the complexities, contradic- tions, and conflicts of interest in Curtis’s masterwork, by Native and non-Native scholars. Some ar- gue that in staging photographs and, at times, adding props or accessories, Curtis took liberties with the concept of ethnography, both imposing and reinforcing white notions of Native American appearances and culture. Others argue that without Curtis, there would be hardly any extant im- agery of the cultural heritage of the tribes he worked with.” (Sarah Rose Sharp at hyperallergic.com 2017)