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11/28/2015 09:48:57 PM · #1 |
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11/28/2015 10:22:44 PM · #2 |
| Some striking portraits. His perception of the imminent loss of culture was spot on. I have no connection at all to my native american heritage, small as it is (one eighth). |
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11/28/2015 10:39:54 PM · #3 |
| Edward Curtis has always been one of my heroes. What a body of work... |
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11/28/2015 11:04:21 PM · #4 |
I found it interesting how many tribes mentioned that I didn't recognize the names of. I guess there were a lot of different tribes from that era that didn't make the history books.
Mike |
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11/28/2015 11:48:12 PM · #5 |
Originally posted by MikeJ:
I found it interesting how many tribes mentioned that I didn't recognize the names of. I guess there were a lot of different tribes from that era that didn't make the history books. |
Many of them were subsets, as it were, of larger tribal "nations" or alliances, and our histories tend to refer to the larger entity, not its components. The Sioux Nation, for example, was "governed" by the Seven Fires Counbcil, and its component units were further grouped into the Lakota people, the Western Dakota people, and the Eastern Dakota people: all of THOSE had smaller, independent tribal units comprising them. |
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11/29/2015 12:17:44 AM · #6 |
Originally posted by MikeJ:
I found it interesting how many tribes mentioned that I didn't recognize the names of. I guess there were a lot of different tribes from that era that didn't make the history books.
Mike |
A very interesting read in this regard is a book called entitled 500 Nations by Alvin J. Josephy. There is also a video by the same name which I believe is narrated by Kevin Costner. Another interesting book is North American Indians by Frederick E. Hoxie.
I had the distinct pleasure of working on several reservations as a police constable and still attend many powwows in this area.
Why do I have such an interest in these peoples you might ask, perhaps it is due to the fact that a few of my brothers married married native women.
Ray |
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11/29/2015 12:20:42 AM · #7 |
Originally posted by kirbic:
Some striking portraits. His perception of the imminent loss of culture was spot on. I have no connection at all to my native american heritage, small as it is (one eighth). |
Sadly, the same was the case in this country, and is possibly due to the fact that we as a society tried to take the "Indian" out of generations of our native youths.
Should you be interested, take to time to Google "Residential Schools" and you will see to what lengths our society went to in an effort to do just that.
An absolutely shameful act.
Ray |
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11/29/2015 12:48:01 AM · #8 |
| By 1904 there were only reservation indians in the US. If only a photographer had done this when photography was first invented and there were still thriving tribes in the Great Plains... of course, that would have been dangerous as hell... |
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11/29/2015 02:05:46 AM · #9 |
beautiful work, but for me the photographic significance/cachet/bonafides is spoiled.
"Most of all, Curtis’s work was strongly shaped by the false notion that American Indians were a “vanishing race” whose cultures were doomed to disappear. “Curtis completely epitomizes our society’s myth of the Native American as some static, unchanging thing,” says Harris. “His photos are the vision of reality he wanted others to see, not what was actually real.” from a National Geographic site.
Message edited by author 2015-11-29 02:08:51. |
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11/29/2015 10:06:44 AM · #10 |
Originally posted by tnun:
“His photos are the vision of reality he wanted others to see, not what was actually real.” from a National Geographic site. |
I agree with this but that's exactly what photography is. The truth of these images is revealed by the classic compositions and carefully posed subjects. It's the photographers vision on display more than the Native Americans. |
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11/29/2015 10:26:07 AM · #11 |
Originally posted by tnun:
beautiful work, but for me the photographic significance/cachet/bonafides is spoiled.
"Most of all, Curtis’s work was strongly shaped by the false notion that American Indians were a “vanishing race” whose cultures were doomed to disappear. “Curtis completely epitomizes our society’s myth of the Native American as some static, unchanging thing,” says Harris. “His photos are the vision of reality he wanted others to see, not what was actually real.” |
And yet, only 110 years later (a mere moment in the 13000+ year history of Native Americans), where is that culture? All that remains are some rituals, not a way of life. NG accuses him of perpetrating a falsehood that Native American culture was disappearing, then in the next sentence lambasts him for regarding Native American culture as static. What they were really on about was his posing, the idea that the subjects were not treated as found objects. That's valid, but it does not diminish the value, IMO.
Message edited by author 2015-11-29 10:27:04. |
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11/29/2015 02:41:09 PM · #12 |
good points. I guess what I object to is that they are/were presented as anthropological souvenirs. And I suppose that is sort of silly to think so, since these are clearly very professionally posed and processed.
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11/29/2015 06:08:43 PM · #13 |
What is really different in how the people in the portraits were shown and how most people were shown during that era and earlier? Many of the non-native Americans, whites, blacks, immigrants, poor, rich, etc., were mostly shown out of character to their day to day activities and environment.
How many images of people during the late 1800's to early 1900's showed people dressed up in the best cloths, sitting perfectly still staring into the camera. What do we know about those people from the early photographs captures, yet we see in all of the history books? It's the same with most of the natives shown in these images... they were in what they considered the best or cloths that had special meaning to them.
Of course a lot of early photography is the result of the technology of photography at the time and the fact that most people were not comfortable or familiar with photography... just like they weren't with planes, cars, electricity and indoor plumbing.
One question I always ask myself when I seem historical images like this... how many images from the digital age will be around for future generations to look at like we do 75+ year old images? I'll bet a lot of the prints, films, glass and tin negatives will still be around in another 75 years, but not so much our digital images.
Mike |
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11/29/2015 07:20:12 PM · #14 |
Originally posted by MikeJ:
One question I always ask myself when I seem historical images like this... how many images from the digital age will be around for future generations to look at like we do 75+ year old images? I'll bet a lot of the prints, films, glass and tin negatives will still be around in another 75 years, but not so much our digital images. |
Yep...I have tintypes probably going back to the early 1900s if not late 1800s going by the way the subjects are dressed. They are exquisite.
I believe that the so-called advances in technology will simply outdate all our digital archives by the end of this century.
As for the vast number of tribes named and shown...Unca Raymee basically said it all already.
And strictly fwiw, when I lived in Northwestern BC I learned that you could see physical differences between the members of the Kitwaanga, Kitsumkalum and Haida'Gwaii tribes.
Message edited by author 2015-11-29 19:40:50. |
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11/30/2015 04:37:15 PM · #15 |
Originally posted by MikeJ:
How many images of people during the late 1800's to early 1900's showed people dressed up in the best cloths, sitting perfectly still staring into the camera. What do we know about those people from the early photographs captures, yet we see in all of the history books? It's the same with most of the natives shown in these images... they were in what they considered the best or cloths that had special meaning to them. |
How do you know they were dressed in what had special meaning to *them*? According to the description, it sounded like they were dressed in what had special meaning to the photographer.
Every photograph is a dream, but *whose* dream? History is a dream, but whose history is this dream? |
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11/30/2015 05:29:27 PM · #16 |
Don writes: "Every photograph is a dream, but *whose* dream? History is a dream, but whose history is this dream?"
nicely put. no single point of view, but always points of view. |
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11/30/2015 06:01:59 PM · #17 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
...but whose history is this dream? |
The ones who always write history... the winners.
Message edited by author 2015-11-30 18:02:45. |
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11/30/2015 06:37:42 PM · #18 |
| no, it isn't. that is the point. |
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12/01/2015 07:25:21 AM · #19 |
Originally posted by tnun:
no, it isn't. that is the point. |
Assuming you were right... why is it that the winners never write about the atrocities that they committed, but focus exclusively on those of others.
Ray |
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12/01/2015 07:59:40 AM · #20 |
Originally posted by RayEthier:
Originally posted by tnun:
no, it isn't. that is the point. |
Assuming you were right... why is it that the winners never write about the atrocities that they committed, but focus exclusively on those of others.
Ray |
I think as literacy has become widespread and communications have developed from Gutenberg to the internet this has become at least somewhat less the case ... I might be wrong but (for example) I don't think South Africa (officially) denies the existence of Apartheid, and here the city of Montgomery is officially celebrating the 60th anniversary of Rosa Parks' arrest, which triggered the bus boycott and made the country take notice of the Civil Rights movement ...
ETA: ... and sometimes they write about it, but don't want anyone to know (e.g. the Pentagon Papers).
Message edited by author 2015-12-01 08:01:10. |
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12/01/2015 09:15:52 AM · #21 |
History is written by the survivors. The literate survivors.
The dead speak only when later survivors dig up & study their remains.
Message edited by author 2015-12-01 09:18:17. |
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12/01/2015 11:26:27 PM · #22 |
The voice of the dead, through the mouth of the living, is not the same as the dead would have spoken, had they been here to speak it.
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12/01/2015 11:39:48 PM · #23 |
| This isn't really any different from, say, the heyday of National Geographic, when they were truly explorers "documenting" recently-visited "primitive" cultures. Or from people heading into the slums and ghettos and "recording" what they find there. The presence of the photographer irrevocably alters the reality being captured. It cannot be otherwise. At least Curtis makes no attempt (that I can see, anyway) to convince us that his images are anything OTHER than formal portraits of a vanishing people and culture. |
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12/01/2015 11:57:16 PM · #24 |
these little truisms - the winners write the history, the photographer necessarily impinges upon the otherness of the other - serve to obscure the possibility of extracting any kind of truth from the written and otherwise graphed records, leading to a strange kind of nihilism/laissez fair/despair.
it behooves us to interrogate the text, the photograph. albeit with impossible questions like Don's - whose dream? whose history? we seem to have lost all confidence in ourselves to interpret.
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12/02/2015 08:24:05 AM · #25 |
Originally posted by tnun:
...it behooves us to interrogate the text, the photograph. albeit with impossible questions like Don's - whose dream? whose history? we seem to have lost all confidence in ourselves to interpret. |
Having spent decades working and associating with native peoples both in Canada and the USA I would counter that it is very difficult to interpret what one does not understand.
If we continue to disregard and deny some of the atrocities committed against certain segments of our society, fail to have open discussions and attempt to redress past (and ongoing) injustices, history is not apt to progress much in this regard.
How many in this venue are familiar with things like the Trail of Tears, the Sandy Creek Massacre, the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the "Residential Schools" in Canada that were put in place to shape natives so that they might assimilate into the rest of society.
Ray
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