Assignment 5 due May 19th

Name_______________________________________
South Seattle Community College
Spring Quarter 2010
due May 19th
ART 170
Randy Nelson
Assignment #5
Edward and Asahel Curtis and American Photographers


View "Different Lenses: The Photography of Edward and Asahel Curtis" TR652.D54 1996 [VHS]

Optional: The Shadow catcher, Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian produced and directed by T.C. McLuhan
TR140.C87 1993 [VHS]


1. How did Asahel Curtis make his living as a photographer?
2. What was Edward Curtis's obsession?
3. What was realistic about the photography of both Edward and Asahel Curtis?
Compare them.
4. How did art characterize their approaches to photography?
Compare the 2.

5. Choose 2 videos from the following list available through "Films on Demand" (available through the SSCC Library website.)

6. What videos did you watch?

7. What subjects did the photographers photograph?

8. Discuss the artistic vision of the photographer or photographers.
9. Discuss one single photograph from each program.

A. Documenting the Face of America: Roy Stryker and the FSA/OWI Photographers
57 Minutes

Beginning in 1935, a group of New Deal-sponsored photographers roamed the American landscape, capturing the human face of the Great Depression. This film tells the story of the mammoth project, superv...

B. Half Past Autumn: The Life and Art of Gordon Parks
12 Minutes

In this program, 85-year-old Gordon Parks discusses his multifaceted, lifelong career in the arts. Best known, perhaps, for his photography, Mr. Parks has documented the plight of the poor as a photoj...

C. The Hungry Eye: Walker Evans
15 Minutes

The stark, deceptively simple photographs of Walker Evans have become a part of America's collective memory, forever capturing the places and faces of times long gone. In this program, NewsHour corres...

D. Outside In: The Transformative Vision of Jerry Uelsmann
30 Minutes

Renowned artist Jerry Uelsmann is a master of photographic manipulation and montage techniques, which he uses to communicate a surreal vision-intriguing, disturbing-that is distinctly his own. In this...
The Real Thing
26 Minutes

This program looks at the results achieved when photographers were commissioned to reflect the world or certain aspects of it. It focuses on the Farm Security Administration (whose archives are held b...

E. From Series: Images: 150 Years of Photography |
Stryker's America: Photographing the Great Depression
23 Minutes

Roy E. Stryker headed the Historical Division of the Farm Security Administration from 1935 to 1943. This program tells the story of how Stryker, a low-level federal bureaucrat with integrity and visi...