The North American Indian

Cardozo Fine Art is republishing The North American Indian, Edward S. Curtis's grand semi-sociological survey of the vanishing aboriginal tribes of North America as they lived in the decades before he photographed them*. The original 20-volume set, containing 2,234 photographs and almost two and a half million words, was published between 1907 and 1930 with financial backing from J.P. Morgan. Today, it is book-collecting unobtanium. A full set was sold at auction by Swann Galleries in 2012 for $1.44 million.

Edward S. Curtis never got quite the reputation he probably deserves, perhaps because he wasn't quite "unblinking" enough, you might say, as a documentarian...he had a tendency to prettify and romanticize his subject, as if trying to recreate a Rousseauian primordial idyll that never actually existed, instead of taking a harder and more coldly accurate look at a culture in volatile and fast-changing transition. Later generations came to understand that over-romanticizing the Indian is a common weakness, and that it relates to ethnic subjugation. But there's no questioning the epic nature of his project, one of the most extensive and fanatical in the history of photography, nor his dedication to it. It's possible no photographer ever worked harder or sacrificed more for his work...which is saying a lot, as successful photographers have traditionally been hard workers.

The new republication will be a fastidiously reproduced deluxe facsimile, and is itself a vast and ambitious project, requiring numerous experts and tens of thousands of hours of labor. No word on the price, but it's very likely a case of "if you have to ask...." I didn't absolutely peruse the materials on the sale site, but I believe the new edition will be limited to 75 sets, many of which are doubtless destined for institutions. The copy photos, sourced from original photogravures from the Frederick Webb Hodge Set, were made using a Nikon D800.

(With my editor's hat on, I have to pick a small nit with this sentence in the promo materials: "Curtis had the support of the wealthiest man in the world, J.P. Morgan, and the president of the world’s most powerful country, Theodore Roosevelt." The United States was by no means most powerful country in the world when Teddy Roosevelt was President. We were a powerhouse of trade, somewhat like China is now, but in other ways only a regional power, ranking somewhere between third to seventh on the list of the world's nations depending on how you weigh the varying factors. Fifth or sixth probably comes closest to the truth. But never mind.)

Mike
(Thanks to Ari Kermaier)

*Curtis made efforts to eliminate traces of modernity and the white man's world at the time, sometimes allegedly even changing the way his portrait subjects were dressed to eliminate traces of modern culture and the outside world. Curiously, as I was researching the recent McCurry kerfuffle, I came across the same allegation leveled against Steve McCurry. It occurred to me that it might actually be interesting if some scholar of photography were to look into the commonalities—and differences—between McCurry and Curtis.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kenneth Tanaka: "Timothy Egan's story of Edward Curtis's quest to document as many native American tribes as possible is an outstanding read, especially in the summer. It's available on Kindle as well as dead trees. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. Warning: It's not about photography. In fact it's not really about Native Americans. It's about obsession, desperation, and tenacity."

Chester Williams: "'The current cost is $25,000 and is expected to go up to $28,500 by mid-July. Payments may be split up over a number of months as your subscription is fulfilled.' Anyone got extra money to spare...."

Robert Murphy: "While Curtis did change things, he was first and foremost a photoethnographer, and he did his best to document a dying way of life. My 'win the lottery and buy what you want' would be a complete set of his works. I would not in any way compare him to McCurry. The project broke his marriage, his health, and left him broke according to the biographies. While he might have removed traces of the 'white man's world,' Curtis needs to be applauded for even attempting what he did."

K Thompson: "With regard to the camera for the repro work, lots of museums and archives use DSLRs like the D800 and others. I work as a museum photographer in an agency that has an archive as well as microfilm reformatting operation for records. The archive has book scanners as well a very large flatbed capable of scanning up to four feet. That works great for Cirkut prints, especially the curled ones that won't lay flat. In our photo dept. we used to shoot 4x5, but for a variety of reasons wound up going to the Nikon D3X. the art museum photo dept. uses a Phase 1 capture back, but they mostly do repro work with paintings. The scanning backs have some issues with needing to use constant lighting which isn't great for fragile items that may be damaged from heat. Conservators typically frown on using hotlights also, and so handling and getting items to lay flat, like pages in old books etc. is always a challenge. When we shot film, it was almost always with strobe and 4x5 EPN because of the conservators.

"I still do a lot of copywork of photos and other textual items that could be scanned on the large format Epson we have, because I can use cross-polarization to handle glare from silvering-out prints and textures as well. I suspect the choice of camera has to do with who is doing the work as well as their budget. In my humble opinion, having shot 4x5 EPN for over 20 years in a museum, the D3X produces more accurate color. It only lacks resolution and has some diffraction-limiting issues but the scan backs are very similar with those problems also and much more expensive."

Lachlan: "The FAQ claims US$25,000, US$28,500 by mid-July and eventually hitting US$35,000.

"I'm a little perplexed by some of the methods and materials they're planning to use. Nothing wrong with inkjet—indeed I'd argue that few repro methods will equal it quality wise, especially in a run of that size. The rest of the enterprise seems a little lacklustre—Mohawk Superfine is a beautiful paper, but it is not really the paper to use for a set of books of this limitation and cost—why not a proper mouldmade? Was it so the iTone coated version could be used alongside for the inkjet images? Even so, a top quality inkjet paper would have presented no challenges to a skilled bookbinder whatsoever.

"Moving on to the typography, I'm quite amused at their claim that digitally set text, printed on a short-run laser digital press is in some way vastly superior to letterpress—if anaemic and grey can be seen as an improvement. It's not as if it's difficult to prepare a digital file, get it output to polymer and printed letterpress by one of the many excellent printers in the USA.

"In essence it looks like it might be a nicely bound facsimile with decently printed images, wrapped up in an otherwise bland production which fails to make the most of its imposing budget.

"Which is a massive pity—a larger run (by offset) might have allowed greater access to the material without compromising the content or, arguably, the materials. In the same vein, a totally uncompromised production might be less profitable, but would make the extreme cost seem far more reasonable. In fact the more I look at the whole thing, I wonder if it isn't simply a really expensive P-O-D book, printed whenever a set is ordered...."

Comments

[toto]

Will that be your next book sale? :)

[If there are any left over we'd be happy to sell the remainders. You can send me a $2,500 non-refundable deposit now if you like, to reserve your place in line. :-) --Mike]

[Rick in CO]

Mike, check out 'Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher' by Timothy Egan. A very interesting read describing the effort that Curtis put into his life's work. We can only be grateful for his foresight and perseverance.
Rick in CO

[Tom Kwas]

...kind of surprised they would have made copy photos with a Nikon D800, when you could get high-end flat scanners that would do 24 and 48 bit files; unless it was a physical problem. Then still, a Hasselblad with 16 bit?

[Flat scanner wouldn't work. Can't flatten a book from a million and a half dollar set. I think they do, or did, have scanners that were specifically made for book pages; Google "scanner for books" and look at the images for some inventive contraptions. I don't know the specifics here, but I'd wager the owner of the source copies didn't want the images subjected to the bright light of a scanner. --Mike]

[s.wolters]

Thanks Mike! I just forwarded this article to some friends who plan to go to the USA. They want to go to the national parks and also like to see something of the Indian culture. Don’t know what they expect to find, but surely they won’t find the world of Curtis. I gave them a small book published by Taschen that also claims ‘The Complete Portfolios’ of Curtis at the cover, but it certainly does not contain 2.234 images. It is very well designed and printed though and costs only €15 (about $17).

A few days ago I wanted to bring up large format photography into the small sensor format discussion with Curtis as an example. For most purposes all modern sensors are good enough, even the small ones. But 4X5 inch or larger is a an other ball game. Those images have a different look. Some kind of grandeur that you can’t imitate with small sensors, including full-frame. In museums and galleries I can always pick out that large formats easily.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

It sounds to me like Curtis was consciously trying to document the past North American Indian culture, rather than the rapidly-changing present one of his day. That actually plays into the discussion of photography vs. photo-illustration; he was essentially viewing his subjects as models portraying something that was no longer all there.

("Sounds" seems better than "looks" when it's the words I've seen on the topic that mostly set my opinion rather than the photos themselves; even though those words have been read rather than heard.)

[marcin wuu]

There's also the matter of Curtis' photos being beautiful, because damn, they are beautiful. It's pictorial at its very very best.

[Bill Poole]

Here's a second recommendation for Tim Egan's "Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher" - a great read.

[Chris]

Nor was JP Morgan the wealthiest man in the world, by a long shot, although many assumed at the time he was. Rockefeller probably took that prize.

[Stan B.]

Yeah, you could say that there are considerable similarities between the practices of Mr. Curtis and Mr. McCurry- except that Mr. Curtis was the first to attempt any type of photographic documentation of an entire culture. The ground rules were far from established.

Mr. McCurry has the benefit and experience of decades on how to document a people and culture without resorting to manipulative trickery. He can choose to ignore that tradition and call himself a "story teller," or he can go down the straight and narrow road following now well recognized documentary guidelines. Instead, he has chosen to not only jump between categories whenever financially convenient, but not bothering to inform or distinguish between the two when he purposely blurs the categories.

[Richard Newman]

In defense of Curtis re "romanticizing" the culture, I expect that much of that was encouraged by the subjects themselves. The older subjects probably had fond memories of the "old days", and the younger ones were raised on stories of those times. Curtis was not a trained anthropologist in the modern sense, and he preferred the positive memories he heard as the model of reality-as did his subjects. Still, its probably as close to the reality of their early culture as it was still possible to get.
I have the Taschen 1997 paperback edition, which says it was taken from "10 portfolios and 10 encyclopedic volumes", with all 721 photos in the portfolios and a selection from the volumes included. Its a favorite of mine.

[Jim Meeks]

I wonder if the 20 set volume will also include the 20 set portfolio of prints? Each volume had a companion portfolio of images that could be shown independently. I believe those images differed from the book, but it's been a while since I have seen any. By the way, Northwestern University has the entire collection, including the text, digitized.

[George Jones]

Many of the visitors to ToP will only have a hazy idea of where Wales is in the world, and even less idea about the county of Ceredigion. However, it's the home of the National Library of Wales, which has original copies of the first ten volumes of The North American Indian. More pertinently, during The Eye photography festival in Aberystwyth (Sept 30 - Oct 02) there will be an opportunity for those who book early enough to enjoy the originals in the NLW. I'm lucky, I just live a few miles down the road.

[Tim Medley]

I'll strongly second Rick's recommendation for Timothy Egan's Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher. I thought it was beautifully written, compassionate, and had a real element of tragedy.

[Stan B.]

If memory serves (been a while since I read Shadow Catcher), Teddy Roosevelt gave "moral" support only. Curtis could have remained a very successful commercial photographer and local celebrity, instead his project to document the American Indian became his life long obsession. He was constantly stressing to get enough funding for his project; and it finally cost him his marriage, his relationship with his brother and other family members, before dying penniless and in ill health.

Oh, that's another difference between Curtis and McCurry- the latter performed his manipulative projects to enable a comfortable living, Curtis sacrificed a very comfortable lifestyle to devote himself to his documentation despite the outcome.

[dencoyle]

just call it 'composing artistry':) / pre-editing or such like... interesting review here: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/07/03/photographing-psyche-marcel-sternberger/ on the working of marcel sternberger's famous portraits....how different/not from curtis' working?

https://www.amazon.com/Psychological-Portrait-Sternbergers-Revelations-Photography/dp/0847848310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468003407&sr=8-1&keywords=the+psychological+portrait

[KeithB]

s. wolters:
If they are in Albuquerque, they should certainly stop by the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center
http://www.indianpueblo.org/

Since the Pueblos don't take too kindly to visitors, they need to be careful about just driving in and looking around.

The AAA has an "Indian Country" Map that lists many of the sites that they might want to see. I would suggest:
Mesa Verde
Canyon de Chelly
Bandolier National Monument
Chaco Canyon

[James Sinks]

K Thompson, you have MADE MY DAY! Thank you so much! It never occurred to me to try cross-polarization with silvering-out prints!

[Apologies for the exclamation points and caps, Mike, but I am giddy at the thought that a seemingly insurmountable problem of mine can be dealt with so trivially.]

[HD]

I would happily buy the ebook.

Seriously - why isn't this available in digital format to to every library and reader in the world, since they obviously have it in digitized form? I don't think the availability of the ebook would undermine the (limited) market for the entire set. Or make it available after the printed books are sold.

There's no reason for this material to be unobtanium any more.