Edward Curtis is a photographer known for photographing Native American Indians. In 1906, J.P. Morgan Morgan approached Curtis and invested $75,000 in him to produce a collection of materials about North American Indians. Curtis accepted the offer and traveled throughout North America for more than 30 years, taking tens of thousands of photographs, recording songs and stories of more than 80 tribes, and comprehensively showing the life and culture of North American Indians, which is a miracle of north American Indian history research.
But Curtis's work has been controversial. For example, in order to show the most real living conditions of indians who have not been influenced by modern culture, Curtis will ask Indians to deliberately wear the costumes of their ancestors for posing. And he also carefully removes modern objects such as alarm clocks, horse-drawn carriages, metal tools, etc.
Many critics argue that Curtis's work distorts the context of the times and therefore cannot be fully corroborated as a historical corroboration of the Indians. Others have pointed out that Curtis only shows the peaceful and beautiful side of Indian life, but can avoid the desperate side of Indian life at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
However, the mainstream voice is still mostly affirmative, and the historical value of Curtis's works has won high praise. His work was eventually compiled into a twenty-volume tome, The North American Indian, which, though of incalculable value in many fields, did not make a profit for Curtis himself, and even ran out of family wealth, leaving his wife. Until his death, Curtis lived in poverty and illness.
Only 500 copies of The North American Indian were printed, and only 214 copies were sold. Such an epic masterpiece is not well received. It wasn't until the 1970s, driven by the American civil rights movement and the rise in importance of Indian history in American multiculturalism, that the decades-long tome regained its attention.
Next, let's follow curtis's lens and travel through a hundred years to see what life was like for the native people of North America a hundred years ago.
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#2021加油带头人 #