As promised from my previous post, I avoided the bus today and took the subway to the Sejong Arts Center to see an exhibition entitled "Edward Curtis and the North American Indian - Sacred Legacy". The photo exhibition, hosted by the US Embassy and put together with the support of the US State Department, was a 75 piece exhibit of the work and life of photographer/anthropologist Edward Curtis, paying tribute to his efforts to record the history of North American Indians and to celebrate the diversity of their history and culture. The show has toured 45 countries and I'm eecstatic that I was able to catch this show on it's last day because I learned about a semester's worth of history in three hours. Also showing with the photographs was the 90 minute documentary "Coming to Light" by Anne Makepeace (which has also aired on PBS's American Masters Series) which focused on his work and the contemporary tribes.
For those of you not familiar with the man responsible for the photo-ethnic documentation of the North American Indian, Curtis, who has that Doc Holiday/Wyatt Erp look about him, spent 30 years of his life documenting over 80 tribal nations during the early 1900's. One of the largest anthropological studies ever undertaken, Curtis, a self-taught, former society photographer from Seattle compiled his photographs into a 20 volume set of books, publishing each one after it was completed. He divided his work into the Great Plains, Southwest, Northwest Coast and Plateau Regions and began this photo-ethnic documentation when most of the Native Americans had already been placed on reservations. He wanted to record Indian ways that he thought were vanishing. And did he ever. It is estimated that he took over 50,000 photographs during the 30 years. Called the "Shadow Catcher" by his subjects, he gained their trust by working with them, not at them, and building a sincere rapport between them. Through this rapport he was able to capture and shed light light on the Native American's soul, giving his photographs great intimacy and emotional depth.
The exhibition was divided into three subjects: Native Portraits, Nature and Spirituality, and Last Warriors. These 75 works were from the collection of Christopher Cardozo, which is considered the largest Curtis collection in the world. The tightly cropped, sepia toned photographs, most with abstract or simple backgrounds brought a largely unknown culture to the rest of the world. However, during the time Curtis was compiling and publishing the 20 volume series on this unknown culture, the rest of the world didn't seem to care. It was during the middle of the Great Depression and World War I. No one had any interest in the Native Americans, who's population had dropped to only a quarter of a million in 1900, from around 7-10 million around the time of Columbus. With a non-interested public, after completing his life's work, Curtis' images were sold to a Boston bookstore for next to nothing in 1930. Forty years later, a clerk working in the basement of the bookstore discovered the hundreds of glass plates, negatives and prints. It was then that Curtis' life work was brought to the world and the largely forgotten culture and traditions of the Native American's were revived.
Even if the exhibit doesn't come to a city near you, check out the documentary "Coming to Light". It is a complete history on Edward Curtis, along with modern Native American's responses to seeing Curtis' work for the first time.
(Sorry for the terrible photos, forgot my camera and all I had was my Ipad)
Some Native American Thoughts
"Mitakuye Oyasin, We Are All Related" - Traditional Lakota Sioux Prayer
"I may walk in beauty-beauty behind me, beauty in front of me, beauty above and beneath me, and beauty all around me." - Navaho Prayer
Looks like a wonderful exhibit! You were so lucky to have seen it.
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