19 Facts About CC Curtis

Charles Clifford Curtis was a pioneering American photographer who is best remembered for his documentary photography of the logging industry in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the late 19th century.

CC Curtis was well known for his use of large plate photography, which allowed him to capture portraits of people and gatherings that were dwarfed by the scale of the giant trees.

CC Curtis was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, on May 28,1862.

CC Curtis moved to California at the age of 19 and began his photography career as an apprentice in San Francisco.

CC Curtis quickly developed a passion for the craft and began traveling throughout the San Joaquin Valley with his bulky and heavy glass plate photography equipment, using a donkey as his mode of transportation.

CC Curtis worked as an apprentice for nine months before his brother provided him with funding to purchase his own photo tent and equipment.

CC Curtis had natural eye for photography and was known for his ability to capture community settings and activities in his images.

In 1883, CC Curtis fell in love with Maria Dewey, who worked in a millinery shop in Porterville.

In 1886, CC Curtis joined the Kaweah Colony, a group of socialists led by Burnette Haskell in San Francisco.

CC Curtis destroyed most of the glass plate photographs he had taken of the Kaweah Colony.

CC Curtis built his photography studio on top of a flat rock across from the Sequoia Hotel, where travelers often came to have their pictures taken by the nearby General Grant tree and the stumps of logged giant sequoias.

Between the years of 1887 and 1893, CC Curtis divided his time between photographing the mountains in the summer and the wheat fields of the San Joaquin Valley in the winter.

CC Curtis photographed the entire process of this significant event, and his images went on to be exhibited at the museum, bringing him fame and financial success through the sale of photos of the tree.

CC Curtis traveled to the fair with plans to sell prints of the images he had taken of the process.

In early 1891, a group of former members of the Kaweah Colony, including CC Curtis, established another utopian experiment called the Esperanza Land Improvement Company in an area called Esperanza on the Kettleman Plains, located to the west of the Traver and Hanford area.

CC Curtis helped to save the Folgers factory during a fire caused by the 1906 earthquake.

CC Curtis eventually settled in Pasadena, where he lived until 1932 and worked as a produce buyer.

CC Curtis remarried twice before passing away at the age of 93 in 1956.

Today, many of CC Curtis's prints are part of the collections of UCLA, the National Park Service, and the Library of Congress.