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Curtis, Edward S., 1868-1952
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Topic
Fishing
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- Description
- An historic photogravure print of a Native Ameican man fishing with a long net., 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), http://www.edwardscurtis.com/curtisbio.html, 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
