Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian, Incorporated

From the 1890s onward, Edward S. Curtis took thousands of photographs of Native Americans all over the West. These were published (1907-1930) in twenty volumes of illustrated text and twenty portfolios of photographs; the project was supported by Theodore Roosevelt and funded in part by J. Pierpont Morgan, and spawned exhibitions, postcards, magazine articles, lecture series, a "musicale," and the very first narrative documentary film. Neither a eulogy to Curtis' achievement nor a debunking of it, this book is an honest study of the project as a collective whole.

A study of the literary influence of Edward Curtis's multi-volume collections of Native American photographs.

Library Journal

In his newest book, Gidley (American literature, Univ. of Leeds; American Photographs in Europe, Paul & Co., 1995) provides a balanced picture of the many aspects of Edward S. Curtis's work. From the 1890s onward, Curtis took thousands of photographs of Native Americans. These photographs were published in the North American Indian (1907-30) in 20 volumes of illustrated text and 20 portfolios of photographs. The author has examined historical documentation, including the letters and field memoirs of Curtis, principal ethnologist W.E. Myers, and their associates, to produce the first significant scholarly study of that project--an effort that spawned exhibitions, postcards, lectures, a "musicale," and the first narrative documentary film. Gidley gives readers a succinct explanation of the substance of Curtis's prolific photography and has tried to reexamine the term vanishing or vanished people in Curtis's original sense. Recommended for public and academic libraries.--Vicki Leslie Toy Smith, Univ. of Nevada, Reno

Mick Gidley is a professor of American literature at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian, Incorporated and the editor of Modern American Culture: An Introduction.