From 1896 to 1930, Edward S. Curtis embarked on an artistic and
scholarly project of monumental proportions. His goal was to
systematically record the ceremonies, legends, daily life
experiences and leaders of every major Native American tribe
west of the Mississippi river. In total, Curtis took over 40,000
photographs of eighty tribes. In addition to his photographic
contributions, Curtis made Edison wax cylinder recordings of the
music, songs and chants of Native Americans. These recordings
were later transcribed into musical notation. Thanks to his
efforts, the basic concepts of 75 languages and dialects were
preserved and more than 10,000 songs were recorded. With his
camera, Curtis the artist, used lenses and glass-plate negatives
much as painters use brushes and canvas. He worked with the
distribution of light and shadow, blurred focus, and photo
cropping to heighten the dramatic effect of his photographs.
Like other photographers in what became known as the “pictorial
tradition,” Curtis was artisticall