Edward and Asahel Curtis and Western American Photographers

Edward and Asahel Curtis and Western American Photographers

due Wednesday May 17th

Edward Curtis 

View the film in class on Monday May 7th:  

Different Lenses

View this video focused on Edward Curtis:

·         Coming to Light: the Edward S. Curtis Story  

Peruse the encyclopedia:  

North American Indian : being a series of volumes picturing and describing the Indians of the United States, and Alaska / written, illustrated, and published by Edward S. Curtis ; edited by Frederick Webb Hodge ; foreword by Theodore Roosevelt ; field res

Curtis, Edward S., 1868-1952. 

1907 

E77 .C97 

 South Campus Reference Collection

Asahel Curtis

Visit the Asahel Curtis Collection at the University of Washington

http://content.lib.washington.edu/curtisweb/ 

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?

5.  Compare the 2.

6.  Discuss a photo by each brother.

7.  Have a look at the Library's copy of Curtis' North American Indian.  
      Choose an additional image from this multi-volume to discuss.  Discuss it         both as a work of art and as an ethnographic record.

8.  Photography as a technology progressed at about the same time as the Western expansion of the United States. Find another pioneering Western American photographer.  A couple examples of immigrant photographers include Frank Matsura and Anders Beer Wilse, or native born Americans likeImogen Cuningham and Timothy O'Sullivan.    Why is that photographer 
      noteworthy?   Discuss a photograph or two by that photographer.