Edward S. Curtis Photos Now On Display

We are proud to host part of the Edward S. Curtis collection of photos, 19 of which are on display right here in the Wyoming Room until May 23.

Just some of the photos we've been fortunate enough to bring to you.
Click to enlarge.

Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952), a.k.a. 'Shadow Catcher,' was an ethnologist and photographer of renown, preserving photographic history of Native American cultures in the early 20th Century.

Curtis's self portrait, taken from PBS.org.
Click to enlarge.

Growing up in Wisconsin and Minnesota, Curtis spent his time learning the photography trade, fostering a growing love and appreciation for the great outdoors. The turning point in his career came when famed naturalist and anthropologist, George Bird Grinnell, invited Curtis to Montana to see the the then dying ritual of the Plains Indians' Sun Dance in 1900.

From then until 1930, Curtis traveled the continent, making some 40,00 photographs (as well as upwards of 10,000 sound recordings) of people from more than 80 tribes from the Inuit of the north to the Navajo of the southwest.

A health crisis, one from which he never fully recovered, forced Curtis into retirement in 1930. He took things relatively easy, writing and doing photography here and there, even shooting the 1936 Gary Cooper western, The Plainsmen, for director Cecil B. DeMille. 

Photo of a young Arikara woman.
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Photo of Tearing Lodge, of the Piegan band, the largest
of the three that composed the Blackfoot people.
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Curtis's health continued a slow decline until his death in 1952 at the age of 84. The legacy of his subjects endures, though, vivifying the grace, beauty, and power of these more than eighty Native American cultures, without which far too much would have been lost to history.

We also have seven books by or about Curtis for your enjoyment, containing 

hundreds more of his pictures.

Click to enlarge.