Discovering : The Photography of Roland Reed & Edward Curtis
Sept 14, 2019 22:14:37 GMT
spiderwort and bravomailer like this
Post by petrolino on Sept 14, 2019 22:14:37 GMT
Games Without Frontiers
"Growing up in a log cabin near Oshkosh, Wis., after the Civil War, Roland Reed envied the tall, slender American Indian boys who slipped through the surrounding forest en route to the nearby Fox River.
"I longed to join them," he wrote later, "and as I grew into manhood and left my native state, the call of those old friends of the forests and lakes never left me."
By the time he died in 1934, Reed had made hundreds of photos of American Indians with glass-plate negatives he laboriously hauled to their campsites on Minnesota's Red Lake reservation, into Montana's Glacier National Park and to Arizona's dramatic Canyon de Chelly.
Well known in his lifetime, Reed is now forgotten by all but connoisseurs of Western imagery. That is likely to change with "Alone With the Past: The Life and Photographic Art of Roland W. Reed," a handsome new book from Minnesota's Afton Press.
Most of its 400-plus photos come from original negatives that Twin Cities gallery owners Leon and Wes Kramer and their late father, Paul, acquired from Reed's descendants. The Reed family also sold the Kramers a huge cache of the photographer's letters, notes and other memorabilia.
That was the trove into which author Ernest Lawrence plunged to reconstruct Reed's life and work. His 'long deferred campaign'.
After working on railroads in Canada, unsuccessfully prospecting for gold in Alaska and working his way across the Western states as a sketch artist, Reed established successful photography studios in Ortonville and Hibbing, Minn.
It was not until 1907, when he was 43, that he finally gave in to his childhood dream and embarked on a "long-deferred campaign" to document the lives and ways of the Indians.
Many of his photos were used by St. Paul railroad developer James J. Hill and his son Louis to promote tourism along their Great Northern Railroad route, while others served as illustrations for the romantic Western novels popular at the time."
"I longed to join them," he wrote later, "and as I grew into manhood and left my native state, the call of those old friends of the forests and lakes never left me."
By the time he died in 1934, Reed had made hundreds of photos of American Indians with glass-plate negatives he laboriously hauled to their campsites on Minnesota's Red Lake reservation, into Montana's Glacier National Park and to Arizona's dramatic Canyon de Chelly.
Well known in his lifetime, Reed is now forgotten by all but connoisseurs of Western imagery. That is likely to change with "Alone With the Past: The Life and Photographic Art of Roland W. Reed," a handsome new book from Minnesota's Afton Press.
Most of its 400-plus photos come from original negatives that Twin Cities gallery owners Leon and Wes Kramer and their late father, Paul, acquired from Reed's descendants. The Reed family also sold the Kramers a huge cache of the photographer's letters, notes and other memorabilia.
That was the trove into which author Ernest Lawrence plunged to reconstruct Reed's life and work. His 'long deferred campaign'.
After working on railroads in Canada, unsuccessfully prospecting for gold in Alaska and working his way across the Western states as a sketch artist, Reed established successful photography studios in Ortonville and Hibbing, Minn.
It was not until 1907, when he was 43, that he finally gave in to his childhood dream and embarked on a "long-deferred campaign" to document the lives and ways of the Indians.
Many of his photos were used by St. Paul railroad developer James J. Hill and his son Louis to promote tourism along their Great Northern Railroad route, while others served as illustrations for the romantic Western novels popular at the time."
- Mary Abbe, Star Tribune
Roland W. Reed [Born June 22, 1864, near Omro, Winnebago County, Wisconsin – Died December 14, 1934 (aged 70), Colorado Springs, Colorado]
'Across The Great Divide' - The Band (somewhere on the Festival Express tour in 1970)
--
The Painted Desert
/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/2c/6c/2c6cc1e6-5e9d-44b9-98e1-da9706335382/canyon_de_chelly_navajo.jpg)
"Walking into "Edward S. Curtis and the Vanishing Race," a photography exhibition now on view at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, I ask Director of Collections & Exhibitions Graeme Reid for the nugget on the Whitewater-born photographer and what he hands me is golden.
"The North American Indian, which was essentially (Curtis') life's work, is in my opinion and the opinion of others, probably the most significant achievement in American publishing history," Reid says, with no hint of doubt.
"(After) 25-30 years, depending on when you want to nail down his starting date, he finished it in 1930, all 20 volumes. At a time when America was in depression and nobody was really interested in buying $5,000 sets of books on people that quite frankly, most people really didn't care about."
Talk about intrigue.
How does a photographer from Whitewater, with a sixth grade education come to create what museum curators nearly a century later celebrate as THE landmark in a publishing tradition that can boast the works of Hemingway and others?
Born in Whitewater in 1868, Curtis moves with his family to Minnesota and, by the late 1880s, is in the newly burgeoning Seattle, with his father, a wounded Civil War veteran. When his father gives him a lens, Curtis builds his own camera and begins exploring the new art and science of capturing images.
In Seattle, he buys into a portrait studio and stumbles into what will become the mission of his life when he convinces Princess Angeline, the last daughter of the late Chief Seattle, to sit for a portrait in 1899.
"This is one of the real key images," says Reid. "Here she is indigenous royalty and she's living in a shack, digging for clams, an object of contempt and ridicule among the white community.
"She's a kind of striking subject for a portrait, but I think Curtis thought, 'there's something wrong. We've named the town after her father, she's treated like dirt and there's something wrong with that.' So he talked to her and cajoled her and had to pay her a dollar to get her into the studio."
In just a few years, Curtis abandons his studio to focus his energies on capturing the rapidly disappearing indigenous cultures, not only on photographic plates, but on dozens and dozens of Edison wax cylinders and in the copious notes he makes on cultural traditions, biographies and other related information.
"He started to realize that with every elder's death, there went a whole lifetime of knowledge and experience," says Reid. "Because it is an oral tradition, he knew that when she dies, that history just goes."
There are 44 images in the show – and one image that is shown separately, among works from the museum's permanent collection – which runs through Jan. 5, 2014. All are on loan from the Dubuque Museum of Art in Iowa."
"The North American Indian, which was essentially (Curtis') life's work, is in my opinion and the opinion of others, probably the most significant achievement in American publishing history," Reid says, with no hint of doubt.
"(After) 25-30 years, depending on when you want to nail down his starting date, he finished it in 1930, all 20 volumes. At a time when America was in depression and nobody was really interested in buying $5,000 sets of books on people that quite frankly, most people really didn't care about."
Talk about intrigue.
How does a photographer from Whitewater, with a sixth grade education come to create what museum curators nearly a century later celebrate as THE landmark in a publishing tradition that can boast the works of Hemingway and others?
Born in Whitewater in 1868, Curtis moves with his family to Minnesota and, by the late 1880s, is in the newly burgeoning Seattle, with his father, a wounded Civil War veteran. When his father gives him a lens, Curtis builds his own camera and begins exploring the new art and science of capturing images.
In Seattle, he buys into a portrait studio and stumbles into what will become the mission of his life when he convinces Princess Angeline, the last daughter of the late Chief Seattle, to sit for a portrait in 1899.
"This is one of the real key images," says Reid. "Here she is indigenous royalty and she's living in a shack, digging for clams, an object of contempt and ridicule among the white community.
"She's a kind of striking subject for a portrait, but I think Curtis thought, 'there's something wrong. We've named the town after her father, she's treated like dirt and there's something wrong with that.' So he talked to her and cajoled her and had to pay her a dollar to get her into the studio."
In just a few years, Curtis abandons his studio to focus his energies on capturing the rapidly disappearing indigenous cultures, not only on photographic plates, but on dozens and dozens of Edison wax cylinders and in the copious notes he makes on cultural traditions, biographies and other related information.
"He started to realize that with every elder's death, there went a whole lifetime of knowledge and experience," says Reid. "Because it is an oral tradition, he knew that when she dies, that history just goes."
There are 44 images in the show – and one image that is shown separately, among works from the museum's permanent collection – which runs through Jan. 5, 2014. All are on loan from the Dubuque Museum of Art in Iowa."
- Bobby Tanzilo, On Milwaukee
Edward S. Curtis [Born February 16, 1868, Whitewater, Wisconsin - Died October 19, 1952 (aged 84), Los Angeles, California]
'The Weight' - The Band (live at Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
