Edward Sherriff Curtis (February 19, 1868 - October 19, 1952) was an American photographer and ethnographer whose work focused on the American West and Native Americans.
Born on a farm near Whitewater, Wisconsin, Curtis became an apprentice photographer in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1885 at the age of seventeen, and in 1887 the family moved to Seattle, Washington, where he purchased a new camera and partnered with Rasmus Rothi in an existing photography studio.
In 1895, Curtis met and photographed Princess Angelina, the daughter of a Seattle chief. This was his first Native American portrait, and in 1898, three of Curtis' images were selected for an exhibition sponsored by the National Photographic Society. In 1906, JPMorgan Chase offered Curtis $75,000 to produce a series of articles on Native Americans for writing, documentation of Native American languages, and logistical and fieldwork assistance.
Curtis's goal was not only to photograph, but to document as much of the traditional life of Native Americans as possible before that way of life disappeared. In the preface to the first volume in 1907, he wrote, "The information to be gathered ...... respecting the way of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be put away quickly, or the opportunity will be lost." He recorded tribal lore and history, describing traditional food, housing, clothing, recreation, ceremonies, and burial practices. In many cases, his material is the only written record of history.
Aboriginal Colonialism and the Gaze
Edward Curtis's photographs reflect a certain view of his colonized Aboriginal people. He erased the clocks and everything else that represented the "invasion of civilization" from his photographs, had the Native Americans wear wigs and ornaments, dress up as perceived natives, and composed the photographs so that they appeared to be heading into the darkness. These photographs slowly shape some of the increasingly distorted and deified impressions of cultures and peoples. The selected photographs in the exhibition do not show the complete "real world," but make the fantasies of indigenous cultures and peoples associated with the photographs all the more mysterious and compelling.
One of the means of decolonization metaphors mentioned in Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor, the fantasy of adoption and the Indian grandmother complex (settler Aboriginalism), is similar to the modernity and presence of Aboriginal people in museums mentioned by Gloria Jean Frank in That's My Dinner On Display. modernity and presence in museums, a subtle connection.Tuck and Yang point out that settler Native Americanism consists of-claims to long-lost ancestors (often lineage on the grandmother's side, such as beautiful Indian princesses), a nuanced investment in the racialization of Natives and Blacks, and a distrust of Native people's ability to determine tribal memberships distrust of sovereign power.
Adoption fantasies and Indian grandmother complexes implicitly convey the notion that Native people surrendered their territories, their ownership of the land, and their most fundamental indigeneity and naturalness to the colonizer for preservation and transmission. This fantasy, as the article puts it, "is rooted in the futurity of the colonizer and built on the futility of the Indigenous." In the midst of this self-referential fantasy, modern settlers have appointed themselves as the eligible descendants and inheritors of the Aboriginal people and land, and have consciously or unconsciously ignored the continuity and voice of the Aboriginal people themselves in their discourse - the Aboriginal people in this context have become frozen in history and myth, without a future, and in need of the settlers to to be embraced and passed on by the settlers. (This allowed the settlers to take possession of the land with peace of mind.)
In glass boxes and carefully retouched photographs of Aboriginal people, Aboriginal people are "represented" and "interpreted," and their own voices are lost in the settlers' self-motivated cultural preservation and historical retrospectives, as if the Aboriginal people were recognizing the sovereignty and voice of the tribal members over the land and culture. sovereignty and voice over land and culture disappeared into the Indian grandmother complex.
The exhibition's single narrative and presentation
Gloria Jean Frank, in That's My Dinner On Display, points out that museums occupy a troubling position in society as self-appointed guardians of other people's materials and interpreters of history (Frank, 163) -Museums have been deified as belonging to the community (Frank, 163). -The museum was once deified as an elevated temple for collectors and professionals to educate the public, and realism gave the museum a sense of absolute truth, subjugating the viewer to a "classical" and "elegant" world. In the "classical" and "elegant" world, the audience is subjugated to the "classical" and "elegant" world, while no one in the museum is able to hear the voices of the groups of people who appear among the truths and truths of the world that are being presented to them.
The cultural and racial superiority that the whites of this period inevitably carried with them as they "explored" the world and collected and processed their archives, led them to be more interested in the subjects of their archives and narratives-such as Native Americans in photographs or prototypes of Egyptian streets in the streets of Paris-than in the subjects of their archives and narratives, such as Native Americans in photographs or prototypes of Egyptian streets in Paris. Egyptian street prototypes - blind to the perspectives of these groups: after all, at that point in time these groups had not yet wielded any power in the Western world, and did not have the opportunity to dominate the story and have their voices heard. They were merely objects to be gazed at and played with in museums, and all the aesthetic paradigms used to perceive the world, from the pursuit of the restoration of the real East known as World as Exhibition, to the Gaze of the narrative object that exists in so many photographs and written records, were also colored by power.
Influences
At the root of this monolithic narrative and representation is an arrogance. This arrogance is often based on the superiority of the dominant figures in the narrative - who one tends to generalize and call settlers, white men, or men - over their own cultural, racial identity.
Interestingly, despite the hubris at its core, the orchestration of the archive in exhibition planning and presentation practices sometimes presents a deification and alienation of the archival subject. Like Edward Curtis's photographs and white self-proclaimed Pocahontas princesses and white adventurer bloodlines (Indian grandmother complex); what is ostensibly a fascination, nostalgia, retrospection, and identification with these subjects is secretly a denial of Aboriginal discourse, existence, and modernity - in this settler (white) dominated narrative, Aboriginal people are "died" as beautiful phantoms of the past, ancestors and objects of remembrance. This allows the viewer to easily overlook the fact that Native Americans are still "alive" and the problems they are facing.
Edward Curtis's meticulously retouched photographs of Native Americans, with their underlying notion that Native Americans are extinct and in the past, are a prime example of how the exhibition is positioned in the past - a past that is distant, evanescent and deified. --It is a typical example of positioning the exhibition in a past - a long, distant, and deified past. It does not detach itself from the original history, but at the same time conveys the message that the subject of the exhibition "comes from the past and exists only in the past". This is not something to be praised, as this form of exhibition deprives the aborigines of their right to speak, objectifying, depersonalizing, and "eliminating" them from reality by over-expanding on the past.
In reality, however, while the Aboriginal people are "dying" and "annihilated" in exhibits and fanatical fascination, some of them are still working tirelessly, traveling around, trying to make their voices heard in the modern world, and to retrieve the archives and "proofs of existence" that they are supposed to have. "proof of existence" - perhaps photographs or recordings of secret songs passed on by word of mouth - and are caught up in the complex challenges of cultural expression and ownership of cultural heritage.
What is needed is an exhibition that connects to the realities of contemporary Aboriginal life, not the mythical past. The same applies to efforts to avoid decolonizing metaphors; Aboriginal voices should be heard, not gradually drowned out in settler fantasies and whitewashing as decolonizing metaphors are metonymized.
“About This Collection : Curtis (Edward S.) Collection : Digital Collections : Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/edward-s-curtis/about-this-collection/.
Allison C. Meier. Web. 2022.11.8 https://daily.jstor.org/edward-s-curtis-romance-vs-reality/
“Contemporary Native Photographers And The Edward Curtis Legacy – Portland Art Museum”. Portland Art Museum, 2016, https://portlandartmuseum.org/exhibitions/contemporary-native-photographers/. Accessed 9 Nov 2022.
https://www.photoethics.org/content/2021/2/24/edward-curtis-and-the-north-american-indian-an-exploration-of-truth-and-objectivity. Accessed 9 Nov 2022.
“Edward Curtis Meets The Kwakwaka’wakw :: IN THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS”. Curtisfilm.Rutgers.Edu, 2022, https://www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu/index.php. Accessed 9 Nov 2022.
“Edward S. Curtis.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Oct. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_S._Curtis.
Frank, Gloria Jean. “” That’s My Dinner on Display”: A First Nations Reflection on Museum Culture.” BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly 125/6 (2000): 163-178.
Hicks, Bob. “Beyond Edward Curtis: Native Lens”. Oregon Artswatch Archives, 2016, https://archive.orartswatch.org/beyond-edward-curtis-native-lens/. Accessed 9 Nov 2022.
“Home | Edward S. Curtis Gallery”. Edwardscurtis.Com, 2022, https://www.edwardscurtis.com/ . Accessed 9 Nov 2022.
“Mingled Visions: The Photographs Of Edward S. Curtis And Will Wilson – The Westmoreland Museum Of American Art”. The Westmoreland Museum Of American Art, 2019, https://thewestmoreland.org/exhibitions/mingled-visions/ . Accessed 9 Nov 2022.
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