Different Lenses: The Photography of Edward & Asahel Curtis

Oh. This program was funded in part by the Washington State Historical Society. The Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the U.S. Department of Education. Additional funding was provided by viewers like you for. At the turn of the last century the Pacific Northwest was transformed. To great photographers who witnessed that era of change on. They were brothers. But their stories could not have been more different. Ya. It was 1887 when the Transcontinental Railroad finally crossed the Cascade

Mountains getting Puget Sound a direct link to industrial America. Washington was a sparsely settled territory. He went around Puget Sound what you find is a group of small towns villages some of them really. Many of them very muddy streets. Most Sen around a sawmill and they were going to change everything. The railroads are just going to transform the region within 10 years you're not going to recognize the place changes came about so quickly people don't realize that the ancient cultures who lived here previously. Were drastically impacted by. Not only white settlement but the technology that came with them and them totally different way of living. One of the trains arriving in 1887 carried a young man who would become deeply involved with maybe a cultural. 19 year old Edward Sheriff Curtis arrived from Minnesota traveling with his invalid father. His younger brother a shawl and their sister and mother followed the next year. The family

settled in what is now Port Orchard. Edward was fascinated with photography back in Minnesota he had seen a chemical advertised in a magazine and were immediately rolled away. For information on it and that's when he built his first homemade. Camera. And a show was sitting there watching him go up probably their father died shortly after the move west and Edward decided to support the family as a photographer. He moved across Puget Sound to Seattle. The city was in a boom following the disastrous fire of 1889. And prosperous citizens one of their portraits taken by. People of society began to seek out the Edward Curtis signature. Their upbeat mood reflected the times. We have much cause for rejoicing. We've been blessed with bountiful harvests new doors of activity have been opened. The hidden treasures of the earth a

ministry one has never. Dreamed of. Even greater wealth rode upon steel tracts. J.M. on the Great Northern Railway to Seattle. Known as the Empire Builder. Hill had a visionary idea of Northwest's potential. Kember between the Cascade range of Puget Sound is the largest and the best quality I have ever seen. We will transport this lumber to St. Paul Chicago and even to New York. The year was 1893. The region's future seemed assured. The railroads meant prosperity. What they do is allow the northwest to finally reach markets in the West. They can mash up their wheat shipment. With they become immediately as the

largest corporations largest employers and. Suddenly economic disaster swept away the promise of prosperity a financial panic on the East Coast struck down banks across the country. Every Transcontinental Railroad except northern went bankrupt. Washington's economy went from boom to bust. And workers fight if their wage workers there's no jobs and they find if they're independent producers like farmers or fisherman they have a limited place in which to sell their goods it's a disaster for them. Curtis then in his early twenties joined his older brother's studio to try and help the business succeed. These were tough times. There wasn't a lot of work and this is what gave those two brothers the chance to go out and take photographs. They weren't being paid. Quickly the interest were revealed some of Edward S s first photographs are

of the Indians. Edward understood there was a mark even though the Indians out here had very little to do with it there was still a national fascination with the Custer massacre and the death of Crazy Horse and all that that had gone on in the 1870s and 80s. The native people were no longer a threat their land was already taken their resources were in other hands they lived by a different form of government. They were taught through a different form of education. And so they were. Chained I guess for they were a creature of nature. American public looked on the native people as a. Memory of how times were. One of Edward's first Indian subjects was Princess Angela. Well known as the daughter of a native chief for whom Seattle had been named. I paid the princess a dollar for each picture I made. She indicated that she preferred to spend her time having pictures taken too.

Suddenly. Once again everything. On a ship steamed into Seattle with a ton of gold and. The Gold Rush. People in life have this adventurous spirit that pouring into Seattle to prepare for the journey north. The whole country was aware of the Gold Strike. Seattle and the best. Merchants and seize the day. But most of the other armed entrepreneurs in Seattle Edwards saw dollar signs. Edward had noticed that there was a huge market for new shoes in the Gold Rush.

So he immediately thought of sending his brother up there. And this was a risky business. A lot of men were dying on the on the trail of meningitis. Interestingly enough so sending a show up there was not a light matter. Traveled by steamship to Skagway Alaska and went to work. Skagway was filled with newspaper correspondents whose trail experience ended at liar's hill five miles out. Into the passes. You won't get as far as liars will was the greeting. Two weeks later they wanted to buy my undeveloped plates. The trail to the gold fields led north across treacherous mountain passes. Keep in mind that the mountain required every body who passed. By. To have a ton of goods this was thought to be about a year's worth of supplies

on top of that 3000 glass plates all that photographic equipment. This was one of the most part tracks of the time a shield took several months to move his equipment over the mountains. The year Curtis went over. The passes. That three thousand horses dying on dead horse trail. It's then that the prospectors the Stampeders became packing animals themselves 50 or so trips up to the top of the summit. Fifty or so trips down taking the stuff down sledding across frozen lakes and and tundra to get to what was perhaps the most hazardous part of the journey. A 500 mile trip down frozen rivers lay ahead. Miners had to build their own boat within 48 hours of the spring thaw. Seven thousand of these crude vessels braved the hazards of white horse Rapids. Not everyone made. We

came around the bend. Just as the. What struck you on. Hearing that the man might drown we attempted to go. Luckily they were able to reach shore and save most of their supplies. What's that happened to them was to have their picture taken. Arriving in the Yukon boom town of Dawson kept taking photographs all the while sending his negatives home to Seattle. Back in Seattle brother Edward wrote an article about the gold rush for a national magazine. He claimed credit for the photographs without acknowledging that he took them. Still in the U.K. focused on more than photography by the gold bug just like the other thirty or forty

thousand people who made it that far eventually staked a claim on the sulphur river about 35 miles outside of Dawson City. I worked with a partner named Charles Evans worth. However like the vast majority of the Klondikers they found no gold. The gold rush that occurred is captured in photographs and experience with thousands of others was no miracle of sudden riches. It was months and years of cold deprivation and disappointment. Meanwhile Edward Curtis had the luckiest break of his life while taking pictures on Mt. Rainier. He stumbled across a group of famous scientists who were lost on the mountain. One of them was George bird Grinnell an expert on American Indians Grinnell would later bring Edward to the Blackfoot Indian

reservation in Montana. Take a good look. We're not going to see this kind of thing with it already. Pat was stunned. At the sight of the great encampment of prairie Indians was unforgettable. Neither house nor the fence marred the landscape. The broad undulating prairie stretching towards the Little Rockies miles to the west was carpeted with TBS. For Edward Curtis. These were powerful images of a vanishing past a past he desperately wanted to preserve with his camera. I. In December of 1899 ational Curtis returned to Seattle after two years in the Yukon. The brothers reunion was a fateful one. When I got back home he. Demanded that Edward give him the rights to the photographs that he had made

in the Yukon and Edward said. I'm. The head of this organization. You know you're essentially working for me. That's not going to happen. The copyright belongs to the company and they had a big argument Edwards declaring that this picture is his and writing that article under under his name and he hadn't set foot in Alaska. And he wrote as if he had walked every inch that a shawl had that sense of right and wrong would just leave he splattered all over the ceiling I could just see and I can hear it. And I think that Edward probably thought that a show was being ungrateful that he somehow should have cooperated with this because they were in it together they were trying to survive. Well that was the end of that relationship. Think of this the children growing up in the same town never even knowing each other. Never meeting each other once. The two brothers at their mother's funeral standing next to each other not exchanging a

single word. This was a bitter rest. And. Irreconcilable. January 1st. Hundred. Has witnessed the perfection of electric cars. Merchant ships battleships application multitudinous and the beauty of the coming is that it is. Brothers took separate paths into the new century. Edward traveled throughout the West in search of more subjects for his growing collection of photographs. On the other hand stayed put and worked for a while as a photographer for the Seattle newspapers.

What being a newspaper man allowed. Curtis to do is in fact Chronicle so very many different developments and he never lost that. That that's really part of the development of a place and. In time Asia left the newspapers and formed a studio partnerships that allowed him to record technological advances all over the state. In Washington State which you find is the basic industries in the state are all being transformed by new technologies. Steam powered donkey engines help loggers pull trees out of the forest faster than ever before. Combine ZA and other equipment especially adapted to the rolling hills of eastern Washington. We're bringing in record harvests. The fishing industry was using mass production techniques both in catching.

And in planning. Natural resources put Washington on the map its position on the map also made the state important. The United States had annexed the Philippines and was now a Pacific power. Washington State's new importance was underscored by a visit from Theodore Roosevelt in 1903. Curtis is. Captured. President onto. Roosevelt somebody who realizes the mystic qualities of the West and how they can be put to political use and he becomes a very popular man in the western United States because in many ways even though born from an elite New York family he identifies himself publicly as as a Westerner and is quite literally the cowboy president. Roosevelt also figured into Edward Curtis's career. After

winning a National Photo Contest. Edward was invited to the president's summer home to photograph the Roosevelt children. Curtis was well into his ambitious photographic history of the American Indian but he'd run out of money. He was anxious to find more before it was too late. Indian life. Is vanishing. Twenty years from now the Indian will have passed from the face of the earth. And so Roosevelt Roosevelt would be able to twist some arms. This is a very worthy undertaking. No man could be doing anything more important. Anyway I heard the president to visit Morgan Morgan is probably the most powerful man in the United States. JP Morgan organizes industrial corporations. JP Morgan is out to eliminate competition to bring

manufacturing transportation into a larger larger conglomerations of power. As it is a very. Powerful. Edward had gone to talk to him to try to get him to fund the entire project that he estimated that it was going to cost $75000 and take five years. And that's what eventually gave him. I think it's ironic that that Curtis went to Morgan to fund his own artistic venture to capture images of the native people people who were so drastically. Inundated by the industrial movement that JP Morgan financed and led. Morgan's railroad empire spread into the barren lands of eastern Washington. Lands that once had been Indian country. New towns sprang up along the tracks. Enterprising settlers began to irrigate. Sagebrush quickly gave way

to a bounty of cash crops. Working for railroads and land companies. Curtis took promotional photographs encouraging newcomers to develop the region's riches. Come to the land of perfect apples. One at. Valley. The world's changed apple growing district was the gateway to your future. The work is easy and it is an area profitable with just a few irrigated acres. He himself bought an orchard in the Yakima Valley. A self-portrait shows him making apple crates. This gag photograph shows Curtis trying to plow. Was a booster. He wanted to see a lot of people move here he wanted to see industries grow you want to see the apple industry grow old timber industry the fishing. He was looking toward the future and the future was bright. The railroads carried the products from Eastern Washington to Seattle which had become an

international port. Seattle was booming and city engineer Reginald Thompson took dramatic steps to bring it into the modern age. He is one of the dominant personalities of Seattle's early history and it's you know again he's a city engineer he's not the kind of it's not the kind of office that you think somebody's going to dominate a city from. But he's he's relentless he's a man of great energy great plans and he does it. Thompson believed to Seattle's hills were blocking the city's growth. So he began regrading downtown streets to level them out. It was only a matter of time before he turned his attention to the NE. From the earliest days. This hill had been an offense to the public. His goal remove it entirely. Curtis recorded the process says Little by little. Year by year. The city level the terrain. Those who objected were

left hanging. Their voices were drowned out by the call for progress that rang out in editorials of the day. There is no land anywhere that should not be surrendered on call to industry opposition to providing all possible land for development is either a blindness to opportunity or treason. A commonwealth. Like Reginald Curtis believed in progress. He was convinced the key to progress was better roads. Personally I have always favored the building of a road through the Olympic range. I know that there will always be plenty of wilderness left after all possible. To Curtis roads into the wilderness made perfect sense. How else would people be able to enjoy the state's natural beauty. His particular passion was mountaineering. That was a religious thing with him. I think it was a challenge.

And of course he wanted to record it. It was the first person to photograph in the mountains for the simple reason it was first person acquiring the mountains always the organizer Curtis was a founder of a climbing club the mountaineers. He led massive expeditions on Mount Baker and in the Olympics or mountain near indeed it was not returned to his home. Better have many lessons learned. The trivial things of life. The petty cares that to us seems so great. Slink back in the presence of that majestic mountain. Edward Sheriff and a show made photographs of the same people that they had day

in the macabre community. Wilson Parker was in every share of Curtis's picture of them of him he has a bear rug wrapped around his shoulders with the claws still on the rug. He has a blanket wrapped around his pants to hide his pants and he's standing there holding his real wailing Lance and harpooned. Curtis also photographed him acall way in there but he avoided the romantic approach taken by his brother. A child's picture shows a whaler standing by a canoe dressed in clothes he would have worn every day. It wasn't his purpose to try and record a vanishing race he was photographing the activity at that. Time. How they got in all these. This was this was like going out to a canning operation and recording how people can salmon. This was how they caught whales.

Edwards approach to photography was completely different. The first thing you notice about Curtis is portraits in the North American leaders. Is that they're generally made very close up. And you make a close up photograph of somebody you tend to eliminate their surroundings. Visually. Curtis his intention was to also eliminate their surroundings. Philosophically to create a view of Native Americans as they would have looked previous to European contact. People have lived around whites for generations now suddenly find themselves symbolized as part of a vanishing past and that's what makes Curtis's photographs of course so ironic because what Curtis does is take Indian people who have worked with several besides widespread dissipated in the larger economy for their whole lives and dress them up as these Aboriginal relics who are fading away into the distance nothing could be more false to their actual daily lives.

But at the same time it's a symbolic Indians that have had the huge impact on American culture. By 19 0 9 Seattle was the largest city in the Pacific Northwest with its link between railroads and shipping Puget Sound had become the northwest passage that early explorers dreamed of. People were ready to celebrate. And staged the biggest party the region had ever seen. The Alaska Yukon Pacific exposition would look back to the great success during the Gold Rush and forward to future prosperity. Curtis reported that 50000 spectators heard the opening day speech by J.J. Hill. Meat and. Meat to.

Millions of paying visitors came to the AYP. Among the exhibits that celebrated the region's progress. Was a display of Edward Curtis's Indian photographs. These expositions and they were asking you time Pacific exposition is it is a good example we're supposed to be engines of growth. People are supposed to come they're supposed to stay and you're also supposed to show the products the resources what they do here in a very clever way is they highlight nature the home. Grounds are laid out so that. You look out beyond what's been built what you've created to make Mt. Rainier to make the surrounding forest almost part of the scene. With the Exposition in full swing. Curtis planned an ascent on Mount Rainier leading 79 climbers. As usual he took his camera but also a request from one of the expositions directors.

I am sending you here with the official a white flag to be planted on the peak of Mt. Rainier. Nothing could have been more. Than four plant blocks position why. They should be solidly in the present with the. Face toward the future. Edward Sheriff. Was standing in the present looking straight at the past. They were in effect standing back to back one looking forward and one looking backward. Curtis would establish his own studio and continue to record the making of modern Washington. He would take more than 60000 photographs during his career. Edward Curtis would spend over 30 years and nearly two million dollars on his magnificent 20 volume study. The North American Indian.

His obsession with the project would destroy his marriage and leave him financially ruined. After Edward finished the entire North American Indian project he had a kind of nervous breakdown. That's what it's been called. And he ended up in the care of a physician in Denver Colorado and a show as a as a family member was concerned about how he disappeared. He'd actually disappear. So he still tracked him down to a boarding house in Denver Colorado then knocked on the door and Edward opened the door saw that it was his brother swore at him and shut the door. And that was the last time they actually saw him. You can learn more about the Curtis brothers in Washington state history at the KC TS home

page if you would like a video cassette copy of different lenses. The photography of Edward NHL Curtis please call 1 800 9:03 7 5 3 8 7.