Native American People Photography By Edward Sheriff Curtis

In fact, it is doubtful that Curtis did anything disreputable or intentionally misleading considering his lifelong dilligence to this art. His obvious intention was to showcase the American Indian in "their own element" as accurately as possible which provided the only credible motive to his removing Western materials, e.g. "a clock", from his photographs which were out of place anachronistically with "pure" Indian culture. The same motivation can be applied to costuming and posing of the native Americans which, contrary to his intention of exposé, gave the impression of idealism beyond his actual intention of realism, albeit euphemistic.
One of the more balanced reviews of The North American Indian comes from Mick Gidley, Emeritus Professor of American Literature, at Leeds University, in England, who has written a number of works related to the life of Edward S. Curtis: "The North American Indian-extensively produced and issued in a severely limited edition-could not prove popular. But in recent years anthropologists and others, even when they have censured what they have assumed were Curtis' methodological assumptions or quarrelled with the text's conclusions, have begun to appreciate the value of the project's achievement: exhibitions have been mounted, anthologies of pictures have been published, and The North American Indian has increasingly been cited in the researches of others... The North American Indian is not monolithic or merely a monument. It is alive, it speaks, if with several voices, and among those perhaps mingled voices are those of otherwise silent or muted Indian individuals.”
Of the full Curtis opus N. Scott Momaday says: “Taken as a whole, the work of Edward S. Curtis is a singular achievement. Never before have we seen the Indians of North America so close to the origins of their humanity...Curtis’ photographs comprehend indispensable images of every human being at every time in every place”
Don Gulbrandsen, who wrote Edward Sheriff Curtis: Visions of the First Americans, puts it this way in his introductory essay on Curtis’ life: “The faces stare out at you, images seemingly from an ancient time and from a place far, far away…Yet as you gaze at the faces the humanity becomes apparent, lives filled with dignity but also sadness and loss, representatives of a world that has all but disappeared from our planet.”