 |
||
 |
||
| Edward Sheriff Curtis was born in the United States. | ||
 |
||
 Simone in a Blue Bonnet Morgan Russell  Red Blossom Alexej von Jawlensky |
||
 |
||
 Vanishing Race - Navaho Edward Sheriff Curtis |
||
 |
||
 Printer-friendly
PDF (1.2mb)  Who is the artist? Edward Sheriff Curtis What is the name of the artwork? An Oasis in the Badlands, South Dakota What materials were used? Orotone Where is the artist from? United States When was the artwork made? 1905  Edward Sheriff Curtis was born near Whitewater, Wisconsin in 1868. He became interested in photography as a young child and even built his own camera. He later owned a successful photography studio in Seattle, Washington. Curtis is best-known for his photographs of Native Americans. He created a series of books, called the North American Indian, that included his photographs as well as information about the various tribes.  Curtis wanted the North American Indian project to show the spirit of the Native Americans. For thirty years, he visited more then eighty tribes all over the nation to record their customs and traditions by taking over 40,000 photographs and 10,000 recordings of Native American music and language. He believed that Native American culture should be kept safe and wanted to document it before the traditions disappeared. An Oasis in the Badlands, South Dakota depicts Red Hawk (Cheta'-luta), a sub-chief of the Ogalala Sioux, who was born in 1854. Curtis experimented with a variety of techniques to produce photographs that could be sold separately from his books. This work was created using a technique called orotones, or gold-tone prints. These gold-toned images, also known as “Curt-Tones,” were praised for their beauty. What does this photograph tell us about Native Americans? How is this picture different from other Native American photographs you have seen? How is it the same? Why did the photographer choose this angle? How would the photograph be different if the camera was placed higher? Lower?  Orotone – Photographs with a golden tone. These types of photographs are created by making the image on glass and then adding a mixture of powdered gold pigment and banana oil. |
||
 |
||||
Edward Sheriff Curtis United States 1868-1952 An Oasis in the Badlands, South Dakota Orotone, 1905 Collection Museum of Photographic Arts Gift of the Schutz Family 2001.022.005 © Museum of Photographic Arts  |
||||
 |
||||
1861 American Civil War begins 1868 Edward Sheriff Curtis born in the United States 1879
1886 Curtis opens his photography studio in Seattle, Washington 1902 First teddy bear 1905 Curtis photographs An Oasis in the Badlands, South Dakota 1947
1952 Curtis dies |
||||
© 2005 CARE All rights reserved