Edward S. Curtis

Private collection, New York

Christie’s, New York, 5 April 2012, Sale 2543, Lot 237

The North American Indians: A Selection of Photographs by Edward S. Curtis (Millerton, 1972), unpaginated

Charles Fergus, “Shifting Shadows,” Art and Antiques, November 1991, cover

Edward S. Curtis: The North American Indian, The Complete Portfolios (Köln, 1997), p. 480

Christopher Cardozo, ed., Sacred Legacy: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian (New York, 2000), cover and p. 109

Edward Curtis: The Master Prints (New Mexico, 2001), p. 90

The portraits of Edward Curtis serve as important historical accounts of the Native American communities Indigenous to North America. Anne Makepeace, the director of Coming to Light, an Academy Award short-listed documentary about Edward Curtis, said of Curtis’s significant contributions to photography, “He can’t stage that, you can’t stage the eyes and the determination. These were powerful people, and he recorded them” (Sacred Legacy: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian, p. 183). Curtis’s comprehensive documentation of Native peoples and practices has earned him praise from Indigenous communities and collectors. The trust and respect Curtis creates between himself and his sitters is part of why his ethnological photography is so revered.