Wednesday, April 12, 2017

THE PHOTOGRAPHER MOST LIKELY TO CAPTURE THE SPARK


Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan - Mariner Books (2013)


Haunting. That’s the best word to describe the photographs taken by Edward Curtis. Like many an artist before him (and many an artist to come), his single-minded pursuit of an unattainable goal cost him greatly in the domestic sphere, forced him to spend much of his precious time groveling at the feet of creditors and investors, and ultimately led to a lonely death in a squalid, unassuming apartment deep in the urban wasteland of Los Angeles. It has never been easy to be ahead of one’s time. Curtis, who was as much an anthropologist as he was a photographer, fell off the cultural radar years before his actual death. But his service to the native people of America, his ability to capture the ferocious pride and dignity of a battered population facing extinction, and his determination to document their lives as honestly and authentically as he could, deserves recognition—even if it’s belated. In his beautifully written biography, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, Timothy Egan lays bare the life of an artist. Curtis’ story is sometimes a painful one: he never made a dime from his Magnum Opus twenty volume series, The North American Indian, and was eventually forced to sell the copyright to pay off his debts; his marriage collapsed in a messy divorce and the spiteful destruction of priceless works of art; he could never obtain enough funding to support his ambitious projects. Most painful of all, the subject he sought to capture was quickly disappearing, as Native Americans in the late nineteenth-century were forced to choose between starvation and forced assimilation. Edward Curtis died a bitter and neglected man. But then you see the pictures, and you realize that somehow, despite the incredible resistance and racism Curtis faced on a daily basis, he found a way to make both himself and his subjects immortal. He captured the spark that lives in human eyes, the light that refuses to be extinguished, even under the most unendurable and oppressive of circumstances. 

Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author who excels in writing about downtrodden Americans. His 2006 book about those who lived through the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. In both this book and Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, Egan displays a talent for writing about unfortunate people in a manner that does not render them insubstantial. His characters may be sick and starving, but they face the future with the grim obstinance of seasoned survivors. In fact, it is quite possible that Egan was drawn to Curtis because both men refused to see their subjects as helpless victims—and themselves as white saviors. The Native Americans captured by Curtis in his portraits are charismatic, multidimensional, and self-assured. There is certainly evidence of suffering and weariness in the lined faces and melancholy eyes, but there is confidence and determination as well. Curtis’ first Native American photographs were of ‘Princess Angeline,’ the eldest daughter of Chief Seattle. Writes Egan: 

The portrait of the princess was magnificent…[but] the picture was not what he’d had in mind when he first spied Angeline against the Puget Sound. Over the following weeks Curtis returned to Shantytown. He saw Angeline in the mudflat, stooped and dark-cloaked, shovel in hand—the clam digger in her element. This was more like what he had seen in a flash that day on the shore. The sitting portrait was fine, but he was drawn to something more natural. Angeline had to fit her background, and that could never be the studio on Second Avenue. Nor was he interested in the image of the shrew, the hag, the crone…No frowning, vanquished Indians here. No starving, bedraggled aborigines. No warriors. They were neither threats nor objects of pity. The subsistence life was front and center, an ageless figure digging for food in front of a tranquil bay, with a distant island and benign clouds in the background, no sign of a city at all. No face was visible either—just the hunched-over silhouette. Through his camera, Curtis gave the backbreaking work, which he never considered anything but lowly, a noble patina. 

This first encounter with Princess Angeline determined the course of Curtis’ life. He spent the next three decades working on one of the most comprehensive anthropological projects ever undertaken. Funded by J.P Morgan and encouraged by Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, Curtis photographed more than eighty North American tribes, descending deep into canyons and battling icy Arctic storms to obtain his material. The finished project would be twenty volumes in length, cost roughly $5,000 per subscription, and document everything from hunting methods to spiritual dances. If Curtis had managed to photograph every Native tribe in America, that would have been impressive enough. And yet he went further. Writes Egan: 

He would embark on a massive undertaking…a plan to photograph all intact Indian communities left in North America, to capture the essence of their lives before that essence disappeared…it was an impossibly grandiose idea, and he was vague on the specifics of how to pay for it, how inclusive it would be, how long it would take and how he would present the finished product. What’s more, after recording the songs of the Sun Dance, Curtis further expanded his scope and ambition: he would try to be a keeper of secrets—not just a photographer, but a stenographer of the Great Mystery. And did Edward Curtis, with his sixth-grade education, really expect to perform the multiple roles of ethnographer, anthropologist and historian? He did. What Curtis lacked in credentials, he made up for in confidence—the personality trait that had led him to Angeline’s shack and Rainier’s summit. 

By the time Curtis sent volume XX off to the printers, he had amassed more than 40,000 photographs and 10,000 audio recordings. He had also composed a ‘picture opera’ in collaboration with the New York Philharmonic and created the world’s first feature-length documentary film. In fact, Curtis’ achievements in film have only recently come to light due to a 1914 legal dispute that suppressed the film upon its initial release. Nonetheless, historians are now able to view this remarkable production from a novice director whose values and inclinations were notably more progressive than those of his audience. Writes Egan of In the Land of the Head Hunters:

Curtis would use an all-Indian cast, all Kwakiutl, not a single Italian in face paint on a Hollywood back lot. He would shoot on location. He would make sure that every prop used, every costume worn, was authentic. The artwork, the houses, the totems, the dugout canoes, the masks, the weapons—all would be made by Kwakiutl hands. He would record native music and get musicians to play it. In essence, the film was a grand expansion of his still pictures and written narratives. 

Many modern readers, myself included, might take issue with Curtis’ unrelenting pursuit of ‘authenticity.’ He often asked his subjects to remove the jeans and t-shirts they wore on a day-to-day basis in order to don ceremonial costumes that were seldom used. He posed them in natural settings that were discreetly cleared of modern objects and machinery. It is undoubtedly problematic for a white man to insist that Native Americans going about their daily lives are in any way ‘inauthentic,’ or that they should not adapt in order to survive. In many ways, Edward Curtis aimed to preserve the ‘Noble Savage’ and elevate him above his fallen brothers—the ‘pure’ native who is doomed to disappear (an extinction that is somehow romantic) being evidently more valuable than the native who would betray his tribe in order to blend into the dominant culture. Writes Egan:

This kind of framing presented a people inseparable from an unspoiled world—just as Curtis had outlined in 1905. If, back at the government food clinic in town, an image of short-haired men in overalls lining up for powdered milk was more representative of modern Indian life, Curtis wasn’t interested. Would an Irishman in a hamlet on the Dingle Peninsula prefer to be shown trailing sheep or getting a care package from America? The question answered itself. Curtis was a documentarian only of a certain kind of life.

Limited and controversial as his perspective may have been, Edward Curtis’ vast accumulation of data cannot be discredited. Whether or not we choose to applaud his methods, the fact is that without Curtis’ energy and ambition, much of the information we have on Native Americans would be lost. Perhaps the best evidence of Curtis’ lasting contribution can be found in the tribes he visited. Writes Egan: 

After purchasing an original edition of Volume XII, devoted entirely to the Hopi, that tribe used the book to build and solidify its teachings, traditions, and language. The Hopi found the alphabet and the accompanying song lyrics crucial tools in teaching words that nearly disappeared. When [Egan] visited them in the summer of 2011, tribal leaders talked about an ongoing renaissance of the old ways: in schools, among community groups, on websites and through social networks, and said that nearly half of all members of the Hopi Nation in Arizona can now speak some of the language.

And then there are the pictures. Edward Curtis took some truly breathtaking photographs that feel imbued with the spirit of his subjects. They are, for the most part, quiet and observational—as though Curtis himself were invisible. Posed as they undoubtedly were, it is equally clear that a certain degree of intimacy and friendship existed between Curtis and the natives he encountered. His portraits of Geronimo and Chief Joseph are some of the most iconic images in the world, but his scenes of domestic life are just as poignant. In Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, Timothy Egan sees Curtis’ life work as it was meant to be seen—as an attempt to celebrate something beautiful and spiritual and precarious. Suffice it to say, I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my own coffee-table collection next week—a condensed volume of ‘one hundred masterworks.’ 


No comments:

Post a Comment