Michael Burgan - Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty
Here you can read online Michael Burgan - Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2015, publisher: Capstone, genre: Politics. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty
- Author:
- Publisher:Capstone
- Genre:
- Year:2015
- Rating:5 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Michael Burgan: author's other books
Who wrote Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
The old man sat staring off into space. He wore a headband, and a blanket surrounded his shoulders. His face was deeply creased from age and decades spent outside in the hot, dry climate of the American Southwest.
In front of the old man, photographer Edward S. Curtis prepared his camera. By now, early in 1905, Curtis was famous across the United States for his photos of the outdoors. His shots ranged from mountain peaks to the huge expanses of the Southwest. People eagerly sat for his portraits, which seemed to capture the essence of the subjects in a single image. Just months before, Curtis had taken pictures of President Theodore Roosevelt and his family. Now Curtis camera was about to capture the image of Geronimo. The Apache warrior had long been resisting the U.S. governments efforts to keep Indians on reservations. He was the last American Indian to formally surrender to the government.
As a young man, Geronimo had ridden his horse across the vast lands that would become the states of New Mexico and Arizona. He battled Mexicans and then the Americans who tried to end his peoples way of life. For 30 years he fought to protect his Apache homeland. His fame grew as he eluded large forces searching for him in craggy mountains and across wide deserts. Finally, in 1886, Geronimo and his Apache followers surrendered.
The catching of his features while the old warrior was in a retrospective mood was most fortunate, wrote Edward Curtis in the caption of his 1905 portrait of Geronimo.
With Geronimos imprisonment, some Americans saw him as part of an era that was fading away. He appeared in Wild West shows that turned some of that history into entertainment. And in 1905 Geronimo was selected to lead the parade at President Roosevelts inauguration.
That grand event was just a day away when Geronimo sat for Curtis at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Young Indian children were taken to Carlisle from their reservations to make them more like white Americans and less like Apaches or Crows or whatever their tribe was. But as Curtis famous picture of Geronimo suggests, even an aged warrior has his pride. The portrait shows a man who is still angry at how his people were treated. He is also a man not ready to give up his peoples culture or forget its past. After meeting Geronimo near the end of the warriors life, Curtis wrote, The spirit of the Apache is not broken.
By the time he took Geronimos portrait, Curtis had spent several years living among and photographing many North American tribes. He took formal portraits, just as he had done in his studio in Seattle, Washington. But he also traveled to where the Indians lived and worked. He wanted to document a way of life that he thought might be erased by the spread of white civilization and industrialization. With his photographs, Curtis told a friend, I want to make them live forever.
Curtis camera captured, as he wrote in 1907, a scene in the high mountains of Apache-land just before the breaking rainstorm.
In the Territory of Arizona, which was not yet a state, an unknown Indian nicknamed Curtis the Shadow Catcher because his photos captured both light and dark so well. Others suggested that the name reflected Curtis ability to see shadows in a persons heart or soul.
The trips into the Southwest were needed to achieve Curtis great goalto record the lives of Indians from the Great Plains to the Pacific, as far north as Alaska. But Curtis wanted to do more than use his considerable photographic skills. He planned to learn about the tribes religions and daily lives, hear their myths, and write down their languages. Using a wax cylinder, he would record the sounds of the Indians words and music. And he used an early movie camera to document even more of American Indian life. No one had ever tried to do what Curtis hoped to doto study so many tribes in such detail.
Curtis wanted to share what he learned in a large set of books he called The North American Indian . He felt great urgency to complete this monumental mission before the traditional ways of Indian culture disappeared forever. When Curtis described his idea to Theodore Roosevelt, the president replied, No man could be doing anything more important.
In the Bad Lands appeared in Volume 3 of Edward Curtis 20-volume work.
Curtis great project would have been bold for anyone to try, but perhaps even more so for someone with his background. Most scholars who studied the countrys Indian tribes had completed years of formal preparation. Curtis education ended after elementary school in Minnesota, where he spent most of his childhood.
But Curtis received a different kind of education while traveling through the states backcountry. During the 1870s his father, Johnson Curtis, was a preacher who traveled by canoe to visit members of his church. He took young Edward with him, and the boy learned how to hunt, camp, and survive in harsh conditions.
Curtis also gave his son something elsea camera lens he had brought home from the Civil War. Following instructions in a photography magazine, Edward built his own simple camera. For most of his life, he would combine his love of the outdoors with his interest in taking pictures.
In 1887 the Curtis family headed west and settled near Seattle. Curtis took a variety of jobs, but photography seemed to have stuck in his mind. Some time around 1890, he bought a camera. His wooden box camera was completely unlike todays digital cameras. Big and bulky and weighing more than 20 pounds (9 kilograms), the camera had to sit on a tripod to keep it steady. Curtis would drape a black cloth over his head when taking a picture, to keep unwanted light from affecting the negative. The camera recorded images on a 14x17-inch (36x43-centimeter) glass plate. Though large and fragile, the glass plates could be used to create photos with great detail. Each photo required a new glass-plate negative. After the images were on the plates, Curtis made prints, creating photos others could seeand buy.
That was Curtis planto use the camera to take pictures of people at a studio in Seattle. The people would pay him for their portraits. First, though, he had to learn something about studio photography. He bought a share of an established studio, and his new partner taught him the craft. Soon he moved to another studio and acquired more skills, while also studying the work of great photographers of the day. Along the way, he had met and married Clara Phillips and started a family.
In just a few years, Curtis became one of Seattles leading photographers. He had a gift for compositionarranging the placement of objects in his pictures. Along with taking studio portraits, Curtis also ventured outside with his camera, though he often used one much smaller than his first big wooden camera. In 1895 he began to photograph some of the Indians who remained in Seattle even as more white settlers flooded in.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
Similar books «Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty»
Look at similar books to Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Discussion, reviews of the book Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.