Fish Carrier, Wishram

Title: Fish Carrier, Wishram
LC Subject: Photography Photogravure Outdoor photography Photography of water Women Riparian areas Streamflow Indians Indians of North America Photography of women art photography black-and-white photography documentary photography photography (discipline) gelatin silver prints
Creator: Curtis, Edward S., 1868-1952
Description: An historic photogravure print of a Native American woman carrying a basket on her back and looking out over a choppy river. Born in 1868 in rural Wisconsin, Edward Sherrif Curtis moved with his family to Southern Minnesota before he reached the age of five. Photography was then a very new technology and an even more nascent art form, and Curtis was fascinated by it from a very early age. By the time he reached his teens he had built his own camera. By his mid-teens, Curtis had spent a great deal of time reading about and experimenting with photographic techniques and ideas. At the age of seventeen, he moved to Saint Paul, where he spent more than a year as an apprentice photographer. In 1887, his father's failing health caused the family to move to the Northwest. This move would later turn out to be a major factor in Curtis' subsequent interest in the American Indian. Thus, although he was large self-taught, Curtis was not only well-versed in the fundamentals of photography, but also was a serious and dedicated practitioner by the time he was twenty years old. During his lifetime, Curtis was widely acknowledged as a skilled portrait photographer, master printmaker, film-maker, lecturer, adventurer and mountaineer. Today, however, Curtis is primarily known as a master photographer and ethnographer of the North American Indian. This is undoubtedly as it should be, for he left us a photographic and ethnographic record unparalleled in the history of publishing. This massively ambitious undertaking entitled "The North American Indian" was the principal vehicle Curtis used to communicate his passionate obsession with recording the image, history, culture and spiritual life of the American Indian. This photo-ethnographic study compresses over two thousand original photographic prints (photogravures) as well as approximately six thousand pages of text. The project ultimately cost Curtis his family, his financial security, and his health. Nevertheless, he single-mindedly pursued his intense and powerful vision with an extraordinary sense of mission and thereby left us with an irreplaceable record which, after decades of obscurity, is once again appreciated as an extraordinary artistic and historical achievement. The fact that Curtis was able to make such an intimate record during the very period when the American Indian's way of life was being destroyed by the White man, makes his accomplishment all the more remarkable. (1987, Christopher Cardozo, Guest Curator for a Curtis exhibition as the Minnesota Museum of Art) The Oregon Arts Commission has ten Regional Arts Councils that provide delivery of art services and information. The Council for this location is: Mid-Valley Arts. You may view their website at: http://www.oregonlink.com/arts/index.html
Location: Oregon State Capitol >> Marion County >> Oregon >> United States Marion County >> Oregon >> United States
Street Address: 900 Court Street N.E., Salem, Oregon
Award Date: 1900
Identifier: 1976_state_capital_photo_18_a01
Item Locator: CUR; 77-97
Accession Number: 1976_state_capital_photo_18_a01
Rights: In Copyright
Dc Rights Holder: Curtis, Edward Sheriff, 1868-1952
Type: Image
Format: image/tiff
Material: Photography black & white photography; photogravure
Set: Oregon Percent for Art
Primary Set: Oregon Percent for Art
Relation: 1976-77 State Capitol Photograph Collection, Salem Oregon 1976_state_capital_photo
Has Version: slide; color
Institution: Oregon Arts Commission University of Oregon
Note: PAPER USED: The two prints in the State Capitol Percent for Art collection are tissue prints. At the time of their printing they were done on one of three papers: Van Gelder, Japanese vellum, and India proof or tissue. A premium was paid at the time of issue for works on tissue because printing on the tissue was a more difficult process. The quality of print on this paper was also better because of the very smooth surface. About 60% of the prints were done on Van Gelder, 30% on vellum, and 10% on tissue. BACKGROUND: These photogravure prints by Curtis were produced 1906-1930 and the body of work was entitled "North American Indians." 20 books and 20 portfolios were produced. The two prints in the Capitol collection were from Portfolio 8. (from REPORT ON EDWARD CURTIS PRINTS FROM CONVERSATION WITH CURTIS PRINT SPECIALIST, 1991) by room 203
Color Space: RGB
Biographical Information: It is thus near to nature that much of the life of the Indian still is; hence its story, rather than being replete with statistics of commercial conquests, is a record of the Indian's relations with and dependence on the phenomena of the universe--trees and shrubs, the sun and stars, the lightning and rain--for these to him are inanimate creatures. Even more than that, they are deified, therefore are revered and propiated, since upon them man must depend for his well-being. (Edward S. Curtis, unpublished notes, c. 1912)