Edward Curtis/William Henry Jackson Edward Sheriff Curtis Essay

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Edward Curtis/William Henry Jackson

Edward Sheriff Curtis was an American photographer who lived from 1868 to 1952. He was born near Whitewater, Wisconsin to a minister father who was also a Civil War veteran. When Curtis was six-years-old the family moved to Minnesota where he soon constructed his own camera with the help of Wilson's Photographics, a popular manual of the time (Flury & Co., Ltd.). By the age of 17, Curtis was an apprentice photographer in St. Paul, Minnesota. Two years later, the family moved once again, but this time to the Pacific Northwest. In the 1890s, Curtis started to take pictures of local Native Americans. Curtis was an avid nature lover and spent most of his time outdoors taking pictures. He was especially fond of the slopes of Mount Ranier (Flury & Co., Ltd.).

William Henry Jackson is one of the most famous 19th century landscape photographers of the American West. He lived from 1843 to 1942 and is known for his great love of the outdoors. His career as a photographer began in New York in 1858 as a photographic retouching artist but traveled extensively to Omaha, Nebraska with his field work as the official photographer with Ferdinand Vandeever Hayden's U.S. Geological Survey of the Territories, as well as to Denver, Colorado and travels to Asia with the World Transportation Commission among others (BYU). Jackson ended his career in New York, where it started and where he died at the age of 99. Both Jackson's and Curtis's lives spanned the first century of the new visual art of photography.

Curtis's photograph entitled "Quilcene Boy," a head and shoulders portrait of a child that was photographed in 1912/1913 portrays what seems to be a very confused (scared as well perhaps) young boy. He doesn't gaze into the camera so much as gaze at the photographer, which leaves a very unsettling feeling.

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This photograph is different in tone and style from some of Curtis's other photographs -- for example, "Sioux Chiefs" (1905), "Oasis in the Badlands" (1905), "White Shield" (1908), and "Nez Perce Warrior on Horse" (1910). These photographs portray chiefs and warriors on horseback (except for "White Shield," which is a portrait of a chief). These photographs depict the Native Americans in very brave ways. The photographs also show the individuals at peace within their environment -- especially in the photograph entitled "Oasis in the Badlands."

The following photographs taken by Jackson, "Pawnee Scouts" (1868-1871), "Petalesharo II" (1871), and "Group of Pawnee Chiefs" (1871) depict the Native Americans in different ways. In the first photograph, "Pawnee Scouts," Jackson has four Pawnee men seated in line, each one holding an axe of some sort. Behind them stands a white man in a shirt and bowtie, with some kind of shawl strewn in front of him. It is not clear who the white man in the photograph is. The photograph is haunting. Most of the men are peering straight into the camera, except for one in the middle who seems to be looking off towards the left of the camera. The reason for the haunting quality is the white man standing behind them. There is something disconcerting in that the photograph seems forced and that there is some kind of statement about the fact that all of….....

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