Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian

I came across a piece in the North Shore News last week on The Edward Curtis Project. It's a multi-disciplinary theatre performance and photographic exhibit by Métis/Dene playwright Marie Clements and photojournalist Rita Leistner, to be premiered at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad and the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival later this month. Sadly I won’t be flying over to Vancouver to see the production, but I was struck by the enduring interest in, diverse opinions on, and responses to Curtis’s own project – that extraordinary, collaborative endeavour to document Indian cultures, which resulted in the 20 volumes of ethnographic text and photographs, and 20 portfolios of photogravures, published between 1907 and 1930, which make up The North American Indian. The project was supported by Theodore Roosevelt and part-funded by J. Pierpont Morgan. And it was thanks to the latter, and then, after his death, his son, that the Library received a full set of the publication. 

poster size height 50cm x width 40cm