40 Facts About Edward Curtis

Edward Sherriff Curtis was an American photographer and ethnologist whose work focused on the American West and on Native American people.

Edward Curtis's father, the Reverend Asahel "Johnson" Curtis, was a minister, farmer, and American Civil War veteran born in Ohio.

Edward Curtis's mother, Ellen Sheriff, was born in Pennsylvania.

Around 1874, the family moved from Wisconsin to Minnesota to join Johnson Edward Curtis's father, Asahel Edward Curtis, who ran a grocery store and was a postmaster in Le Sueur County.

Edward Curtis left school in the sixth grade and soon built his own camera.

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In 1885, at 17, Edward Curtis became an apprentice photographer in St Paul, Minnesota.

In 1898, three of Edward Curtis's images were chosen for an exhibition sponsored by the National Photographic Society.

In that same year, while photographing Mount Rainier, Edward Curtis came upon a small group of scientists who were lost and in need of direction.

Edward Curtis was appointed the official photographer of the Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899, probably as a result of his friendship with Grinnell.

Edward Curtis received no salary for the project, which was to last more than 20 years.

Once Edward Curtis had secured funding for the project, he hired several employees to help him.

For general assistance with logistics and fieldwork, he hired Bill Phillips, a graduate of the University of Washington and Alexander B Upshaw a Crow Indian who had received a Western education and helped Curtis in accessing and discussing with Indian tribes and understanding their culture.

Edward Curtis's goal was not just to photograph but to document as much of Native American traditional life as possible before that way of life disappeared.

Edward Curtis took over 40,000 photographic images of members of over 80 tribes.

Edward Curtis recorded tribal lore and history, and he described traditional foods, housing, garments, recreation, ceremonies, and funeral customs.

Edward Curtis's work was exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles festival in France in 1973.

Edward Curtis had been using motion picture cameras in fieldwork for The North American Indian since 1906.

Edward Curtis worked extensively with the ethnographer and British Columbia native George Hunt in 1910, which inspired his work with the Kwakiutl, but much of their collaboration remains unpublished.

Edward Curtis chose the Kwakiutl tribe, of the Queen Charlotte Strait region of the Central Coast of British Columbia, Canada, for his subject.

Edward Curtis made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase the studio with Curtis's daughter Beth in 1916, the year of Curtis's divorce, and left to open her own studio.

Around 1922, Edward Curtis moved to Los Angeles with Beth and opened a new photo studio.

On October 16,1924, Edward Curtis sold the rights to his ethnographic motion picture In the Land of the Head-Hunters to the American Museum of Natural History.

Edward Curtis was paid $1,500 for the master print and the original camera negative.

In 1927, after returning from Alaska to Seattle with Beth, Edward Curtis was arrested for failure to pay alimony over the preceding seven years.

In 1892, Curtis married Clara J Phillips, who was born in Pennsylvania.

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On October 19,1952, at the age of 84, Edward Curtis died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California, in the home of his daughter Beth.

Edward Curtis was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Edward Curtis's research was done under the patronage of the late financier, J Pierpont Morgan.

Edward Curtis discovered almost 285,000 original photogravures as well as all the copper plates.

Edward Curtis's work was featured in several anthologies on Native American photography published in the early 1970s.

In 2017 Edward Curtis was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.

The men, women, and children in The North American Indian seem as alive to us today as they did when Edward Curtis took their pictures in the early part of the twentieth century.

Edward Curtis respected the Native Americans he encountered and was willing to learn about their culture, religion and way of life.

When judged by the standards of his time, Edward Curtis was far ahead of his contemporaries in sensitivity, tolerance, and openness to Native American cultures and ways of thinking.

In Mr Edward Curtis we have both an artist and a trained observer, whose work has far more than mere accuracy, because it is truthful.

Mr Edward Curtis in publishing this book is rendering a real and great service; a service not only to our own people, but to the world of scholarship everywhere.

Edward Curtis has been praised as a gifted photographer but criticized by some contemporary ethnologists for manipulating his images.

Edward Curtis is known to have paid natives to pose in staged scenes or dance and partake in simulated ceremonies.

Edward Curtis's models were paid in silver dollars, beef and autographed photos.

Edward Curtis paid natives to pose at a time when they lived with little dignity and enjoyed few rights and freedoms.