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A DVD version of Edward S. Curtis's Indian Picture Opera, a magic lantern show from 1911.
In the early 1900's, legendary photographer Edward S. Curtis published the renowned 20-volume book subscription entitled "The North American Indian". In it he compiled 2400 photographs with detailed studies of tribes of the American west.
This DVD reconstructs "The Indian Picture Opera - A Vanishing Race". It was a slide show, and lecture that played in theaters from 1911 through 1912. Curtis used the show as a pitch, to sell his book subscriptions to wealthy Americans.
As Curtis romanticized the American Indian in his works, he left behind an amazing snapshot of humanity.
DVD: Widescreen, All-Region, Dolby 2.0 amd 5.1 surround sound, Subtitles: English, French & Spanish. 52 minutes.
Cast: Mark Middler as Edward S. Curtis, and David Chanar as The Native American Voice.
Festivals: The Heard Museum, The Anchorage International Film Festival.
The Indian Picture Opera - A Vanishing Race
This film is a journey through history, where famed photographer Edward S. Curtis explains Native American cultures in his own words, and photographs. This motion picture reconstruction of his 1911-1912 magic lantern slide show illuminates a time when Native Americans were forced from their land and cultures. Curtis's documentation of Indian cultures serve as a unique footprint in time.
The Indian Picture Opera contains hundreds of photos and re-created music composed for the original 1911 slide show. Its a throw back to a time nearly 100 years ago, and a magical tour through history. This production is brought to life with the use of computer graphics, and modern day animations. This effort required the recreation of 19 original musical compositions composed for the original Curtis slide show in 1911. The composer was Henry Gilbert, and most of this music had been shelved for nearly 100 years.
Background:
In the early 1900's, famed photographer Edward S. Curtis published the renowned 20-volume book subscription entitled "The North American Indian". He compiled about 2400 photographs with detailed ethnological and language studies of tribes of the American West.
This DVD reconstructs "The Indian Picture Opera - A Vanishing Race", which was a slide show and lecture that played in theaters from 1911 through 1912. Curtis used the show as a pitch to sell his book subscriptions to the wealthy Americans.
Stereo-Opticon projectors put Curtis's stunning images on screens in America's largest cities.... one scene dissolving into another. A small orchestra played music derived from Indian chants and rhythms, and Edward Curtis lectured on the intimate stories of tribal life.
This Magic Lantern show played to breathless audiences, stunned by the humanity, fascinated by the imagery, and shamed by the destruction of Indian cultures. The shows received standing ovations, and generous reviews.
This is a Widescreen, All-Region DVD, Dolby 2.0 amd 5.1 surround sound, and Subtitles in English, French and Spanish.
Cast: Mark Middler as Edward S. Curtis, and David Chanar as The Native American Voice.
Film Festivals: The Indian Picture Opera was selected for exhibition in the Heard Museum's Film Festival in Phoenix, Arizona in October 2006.
It has also been included in the December 2006 Anchorage AK. International Film Festival.
The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis is one of the most significant and controversial representations of traditional American Indian culture ever produced. Issued in a limited edition from 1907-1930, the publication continues to exert a major influence on the image of Indians in popular culture. Curtis said he wanted to document "the old time Indian, his dress, his ceremonies, his life and manners." In over 2000 photogravure plates and narrative, Curtis portrayed the traditional customs and lifeways of eighty Indian tribes. The twenty volumes, each with an accompanying portfolio, are organized by tribes and culture areas encompassing the Great Plains, Great Basin, Plateau Region, Southwest, California, Pacific Northwest, and Alaska. Featured here are all of the published photogravure images including over 1500 illustrations bound in the text volumes, along with over 700 portfolio plates.
EDWARD SHERIFF CURTIS was born in Wisconsin in 1868 to parents Ellen and Johnson Curtis. His sister, Eva, was born in 1870 and his brother, Asahel, in 1874. Edward also had an older brother, Ray, born in 1861. After Asahel's birth the family moved to Cordova, a rural settlement in Le Sueur County, Minnesota, where Johnson Curtis worked as a preacher for United Brethren Church. As a boy Edward often accompanied his father on canoe trips to visit members of the congregation. His experience camping outdoors with his father helped prepare him for the extensive field work he would do later in his career.
As an adolescent Edward constructed his own camera with the help of the then popular manual Wilson's Photographics. It is also possible that he worked for a photographer in St. Paul for a period of time before his family moved west. Because his father's health was not good and his older brother Ray had married and moved to Portland, Oregon, Curtis took on much of the responsibility of supporting the family. He worked for a time as a supervisor on the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault St. Marie Railroad.
In the Fall of 1887 Edward and his father traveled to Washington Territory and by Winter had settled in the Puget Sound. They were joined by Ellen Curtis and the other two children the following Spring. Shortly after their arrival Johnson Curtis contracted pneumonia and died. Edward then assumed primary responsibility for supporting the family. Although his income was meager, he was able to buy a camera. In 1892 he married Clara Phillips and opened a portrait studio in Seattle in partnership with Thomas Guptill. While their business was very successful, they parted ways in 1897 and Curtis renamed the business Edward S. Curtis, Photographer and Photoengraver.
For Edward S. Curtis, the Indian as a nation was "the vanishing race" whose ancient manners, customs, and traditions should be recorded before they disappeared. To this end, Curtis dedicated his life to documenting the North American Indian. The result of his life's work was The North American Indian: twenty volumes of text accompanied by 1500 photogravure prints, 20 complete portfolios totaling 722 plates and a special de luxe edition. The New York Herald referred to this magnum opus as "the most gigantic undertaking in the making of books since the King James edition of the Bible."
His quest began in the midwest where he learned the fundamentals of photography. In the 1880s, Curtis moved to Washington Territory, setting up a small studio photography business with Henry Guptil. In this rugged country, Curtis became a skilled mountaineer and expedition leader as well as an accomplished photographer of Mount Rainier. Here also he was exposed to the oppressed Native American people of the area who were living in severe poverty. So concerned was he that modern civilization had lost touch with what had once been harmonious unity between Man and Nature, he dedicated himself to recording for future generations the full spectrum of Native American life, with an emphasis on the Indians' peaceful arts and culture.
His photographic work was both documentation and idealized reconstruction. Curtis often posed his subjects so that at times his pictures appear to be reenactments. He is known, in fact, to have had his subjects wear the obsolete dress of their forefathers for his camera. And his models were paidÑwith silver dollars, sides of beef and autographed photographs. Princess Angelina, the daughter of Chief Sealth (whose name was later Anglicized into Seattle) posed for Curtis for a dollar a picture. The photographs of Princess Angelina digging clams won several awards and were exhibited internationally.
Although Curtis was an amateur and lacked the scholarly training of an anthropologist, he often was able to obtain information that eluded others. Curtis was clearly a charismatic man, with tremendous patience and sensitivity to and empathy with the Native American people whose lives he recorded. With the help of an interpreter, Curtis held interviews with elders, shamans, warriors, young men and women who related their tribal lore to him. At a time when the Indians' distrust of foreigners was an obstacle which had to be overcome, Curtis' presence would be tolerated or ignored during religious events, so that he was able to observe and record. Curtis even claimed to have actually participated in the Hopi Snake Society's rituals, and to have passed through the arduous endurance tests required for tribal acceptance. Through persistence and respect, Curtis won the confidence of the Native Americans and eventually was allowed to photograph sacred rituals and private ceremonies, using either actual participants or hired models.
Curtis' photographs won him the admiration and friendship of Theodore Roosevelt, who in turn introduced Curtis to the magnate and philanthropist J.P. Morgan. MorganÑand after his death in 1913, the Morgan estateÑfinanced more than half of the enormous undertaking of The North American Indian. The twenty volumes (each of which took one to two years to produce) covered more than eighty Indian tribes west of the Mississippi; Indians of the Unites States, British Columbia and Alaska who still retained, in Curtis's view, their primitive customs and beliefs. His thirty years in the field began in the searing heat of the southwestern desert and ended in a howling gale in the Arctic Ocean. Curtis intended the limited edition of the 20 volume set to be 500. However, only 272 sets were printed and bound. Because of its size and cost, this landmark publication, which was begun in 1907 and finally completed in 1930, was doomed to obscurity during the prevailing economic depression.
Curtis produced his Indian pictures in two groups: photogravuresand original fine art photographs. Photogravure was the process Curtis used to produce The North American Indian. From the original negative, a glass positive was made and then the image was transferred chemically to a copper plate from which hand-pulled ink prints were made. Curtis printed his photogravures on the most elegant and archival handmade papers of the time: Holland Van Gelder, Japon Vellum and Tissue. The only other comparable project of this kind was Alfred Stieglitz' publication Camera Work, which also used photogravure reproductions of photographs.
The original photographs are the rarer and more valuable of the two and are referred to as Master Prints. The Master Prints include platinum prints, silver prints, gum bichromate prints and orotones, or goldtones. Curtis made the goldtone so much his own, that he affixed his name to the process and dubbed it the Curt-tone!
Curtis wrote of the process:
"The ordinary photographic print, however good, lacks depth and transparency, or more strictly speaking, translucency. We all know how beautiful are the stones and pebbles in the limpid brook of the forest where the water absorbs the blue of the sky and the green of the foliage, yet when we take the same iridescent pebbles from the water and dry them they are dull and lifeless, so it is with the orthodox photographic print, but in the Curt-tones all the translucency is retained and they are as full of life and sparkle as an opal."
Today, Edward Curtis is recognized as a pioneer in visual anthropology and as a sensitive artist of photography whose poignant portraits of American Indians are among the most remarkable and recognizable ever made.
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