Focusing In on American Indian Life

“Following the Indian’s form of naming man, I would be termed the Man Who Never Took Time to Play,” photographer Edward Curtis quipped at age 83.

Fifty years earlier, Curtis, head of a successful portrait studio in Seattle, had launched one of the most monumental projects in photographic history--the documentation, in words and images, of the life of the North American Indian. The effort consumed three decades of his life, much of it spent living among the American Indian tribes he was studying. Encouraged by President Theodore Roosevelt and funded by J.P. Morgan, the project culminated in the publication of 20 volumes of pictures and texts, published between 1907 and 1930. In “The North American Indian,” Roosevelt wrote, Curtis “has been able to do what no other man has ever done; what, as far as we can see, no other man could do. . . . He has not only seen [the Indians’] vigorous outward existence, but has caught glimpses, such as few white men ever catch, into that strange spiritual and mental life of theirs; from whose innermost recesses all white men are forever barred.”

A thin sliver of Curtis’ magnum opus is on view at the Orange County Museum of Art in the quietly compelling exhibition “Edward S. Curtis: Sites and Structures.” Curtis made more than 40,000 negatives in the course of the project, and 2,200 appeared in the published volumes, some bound with the text and others in accompanying portfolios. The Orange County show features 60 images, all focusing on dwellings, burial sites, structures for food storage, and architectural ruins. Drawn from the private collection of locals Dan and Mary Solomon, the selection gives a good sense of Curtis’ clean, elegant style and just an inkling of the project’s ambitious scope.

The taxonomic impulse has gripped numerous photographers throughout the medium’s history, and Curtis is not alone in the zeal and perseverance department. Around the same time that Curtis was compiling his material, Eugene Atget was roaming Paris and creating a vast pictorial document of the city, particularly the neighborhoods threatened by urban renewal. Concurrently, in Germany between the world wars, August Sander began making an encyclopedic survey of 20th century German society according to class, type and profession, until the Nazis forced an end to his project.

But unlike Atget, who called Paris home, or Sander, himself a German citizen, Curtis would always remain apart from the subjects of his study. Earnest intentions and proven commitment aside, he was an outsider looking in, a white man using the privileged power of his chosen words and framed views to define another culture, a culture suffering extreme, systematic subjugation by others of his own race.

Many an ethnographic study is tainted--some would say informed by--such an imbalance of power between scholar-artist and subject, but Curtis widened the credibility gap further through questionable practices of his own. He is reputed to have carried props and costumes with him, and occasionally outfitted his models in ways inconsistent with their own traditional mode of dress to make them conform more to popular imagination--as ideal, romantic, pure, primitive and picturesque.

Questions of authenticity have complicated Curtis’ work from its inception, but far from discrediting his project, that complexity is central to the works’ enduring value. “The North American Indian” is not reducible to a simple intention and its realization. It raises prickly, necessary questions on every level--political, ethical, aesthetic--and delivers different answers at different points in time.

Beauty, however, has been one constant and consistently recognized trait in Curtis’ work. His images are concentrated, distilled, formally concise and yet richly atmospheric. Curtis printed in photogravure, an ink-based process favored by turn-of-the-century Pictorialists for the range of painterly effects it can produce through handwork. Toning his prints in a warm sepia and softening contours by abrading the copper printing plate, Curtis infused his pictures with a palpable sense of nostalgia. This reinforced the perception that traditional American Indian ways were out of sync with modern, industrialized life. Curtis’ pictures preserved the look and feel of traditional tribal culture, while mourning its forced passing.

In the photographs at the Orange County museum, Curtis’ characteristic balance between the romanticized and the real tips decisively toward the concrete and descriptive. He kept the focus crisp in these pictures of tepees, hogans, wickiups and other structures, enhancing their value as data. Many of the views are straight on, clear and complete, showing a range of shapes, materials and building techniques used by the tribes he studied. Yet the voice of the expressive Curtis emerges quite eloquently from time to time.

“A Narrow Street, Laguna” locates the viewer in the shadowy corridor between buildings, conjuring up a real sense of physical presence within the space. A view of a Kwakiutl house frame again positions us on the inside, allowing us the perspective of looking up through dramatically receding roof posts to the sky, and outward to a peaceful expanse of trees and water.

Scenes from the Southwestern desert to the Northwest coast, from kivas to totem poles, hint at Curtis’ extraordinary range. As he traveled, he collected stories (recording some on waxed cylinders, the most advanced audio equipment of the day), formed affinities and aversions, and established a tone, in his images and in his writings, of sustained fascination.

It’s regrettable that this selection of photographs is exhibited without excerpts from the writings that accompanied them in publication. The texts not only provide a wealth of information and explanation, but they also enable us to hear the inflections of Curtis’ own voice, his firsthand observations, his subtle judgments. In his words as much as in his pictures, we can feel the urgency of his mission to collect and preserve the traditions of American Indians who, it was felt at the time, were facing imminent extinction. Curtis saw, however, that American Indians were not just vanishing but changing, assimilating and adapting as means to their survival. They were passing, as he put it, “into the darkness of an unknown future.”

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“Edward S. Curtis: Sites and Structures,” Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach, (949) 759-1122, through April 1. Closed Monday.