FUNDACIÓN SOPHIA

BRINGS THE SACRED LEGACY TO MALLORCA

Photographic Exhibit Highlights North American Indians

Palma de Mallorca, 19th November,  2008 – Fundación Sophia, with the support of the   US Embassy, is bringing to Palma a collection of prints by renowned photographer Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952), whose extensive documentation of indigenous tribal life in the United States and Canada produced compelling pictures that continue to shape popular perceptions about the Western frontier.

The exhibit will be inaugurated by Dr. Francis J. Vilar, President of Fundación Sophia and the Assistant Cultural Attaché of the U.S. Embassy, Valerie O’Brien, on Wednesday, November 19th, at 8:30 p.m., at Sophia’s exhibit hall at Calle Jaime Ferrer, 3 (Near La Lonja). Tel. 971 721 555. The showcase will remain open until 12 December, Monday to Thursday, from 6 pm to 10 pm. The entrance is free.

“Sacred Legacy and the North American Indian”, showcases a broad selection of those most iconic 19th-century images of American Indian peoples that have captivated viewers from around the world. The travelling photographic exhibit, created expressly for the U.S. Department of State, is brought to Palma by Fundación Sophia and the US Embassy, as an initiative designed to illustrate the extraordinary diversity of the North American Indian tribes, and to stimulate positive dialogue about the diverse indigenous populations in the American continent.

The exhibit has been travelling around Europe and Latin America since the year 2000, and the showcase that comes to Palma is a special collection that features 60 museum-quality images, printed with the photographic processes used at the beginning of the XX century, like platinum, toned silver print, silver gelatine, photoengraving and cyanotype.

“We decided to hold this exhibit because of its ethnographic importance”, said Dr. Francis J. Vilar, an Egyptologist and president of Fundación Sophia. “The collection highlights the photographer’s historic vision as he understood the need to document fading Indian tribes and traditions for posterity”, he added. Indeed, Edward Curtis’s photographs have been the focus of study by many scholars in recent years.

The Photographer

Eduard Sheriff Curtis was born in 1869 in rural Wisconsin, of humble origins. He discovered photography and managed to come up with $1,25 to build his own camera and a couple of years later he became an apprentice photographer. After his father’s death he became the family’s provider and moved to Seattle, in Washington state, where he became a famed society portraitist. During his spare time he explored the mountains and it was on one of those outings when he met his fate.

One day he helped a lost group of scientists find their way back.  This group included the renowned anthropologist George Brennell, who later invited Curtis to join the group for a two-week scientific expedition. It was then when he came in contact with the Indians, saw their culture and realized it was vanishing. Preserving it became his life’s mission, dedicating 30 years of his life to capturing with his lens the different tribes in the United States and Canada.

He became friends with important chiefs like Red Cloud and Luther Standing Bear, who realizing their vanishing reality, collaborated with Curtis by sharing their history, their language, their music and their traditions, which he taped in 10,000 wax cylinder recordings. He struggled with the financial side of the project until one day, President Theodore Roosevelt introduced him to the legendary banker JP Morgan, who financed a third of the ambitious project. Curtis had to finance the rest with lectures, prints and book sales.

Curtis lost his health, his family and money in the project and died poor and forgotten in 1952. His equipment was lost and only 100 of the nearly 50,000 negatives survived. The increasing interest in photography in the 70’s rescued Edward Curtis’ work from obscurity, thanks to the extensive research carried out by Christopher Cardozo, one of the leading authorities on Curtis and the exhibit’s curator.

The Exhibit

A world of serenity is the word that sums up the pictures best, men and women with nature, in their habitat, with their way of life that seems to blend in with their surroundings, which they highly respected. 

The exhibit is organised according to the three geographical areas that were the focus of Curtis’ study: the Pacific Northwest, the Great Plains and the Southwest.

The Northwest Coast

The tribes of the Northwest Coast reportedly had the most elaborate and sophisticated material culture of any indigenous groups visited by Curtis, and as he discovered, the Northwestern tribes had developed spectacular ceremonial objects, such as complex masks and totem poles.

In his images of the Northwest's indigenous people, Curtis often featured scenic backdrops such as lakes and rivers (a favourite element of the photographer), along with mountain valleys surrounded by majestic forests. His photographs of tribal life in the Plateau and Woodlands regions, which extend from the northern United States into Canada, are perhaps some of his most lyrical and serene.

In the landscape of the Northwest, Curtis often found a perfect setting in which to portray Indian tribes whose culture and religion still seemed in complete harmony with their natural environment. This is reflected in the poetic quality of his best photographs from the area, suggesting that the places and peoples he found in the Northwest exemplified the sacred legacy he strove to record.

 

  

The Great Plains

Curtis's photographs of Indian life on the Great Plains comprise perhaps his most popular body of work: for many people, his photographs of chiefs and warriors, the intricate beadwork, the horses, and the Plains landscape have come to exemplify the American Indian. However, his photographs of the Plains Indians also documented many other aspects of tribal life -- including hunting, warfare, vision quests and religious ceremonies.

The tribes of the Great Plains were the most formidable and powerful in North America, and they inspired Curtis by the majesty of their lives. The great expanses of land and sky, the horses, the lodges the sacred sun ceremonies -- all are depicted in Curtis's stirring Plains landscape photographs.

The Southwest

The Indians of the Southwest lived primarily in Arizona and New Mexico, although their presence also extended into parts of Texas, California and northern Mexico. Because of the scarcity of vegetation, game and water in their semi-arid habitat, the tribal people of the Southwest became largely dependent on agriculture for subsistence. As their reliance on agriculture grew, the Indians of the Southwest adopted an increasingly village-oriented culture. In fact, some of their villages and pueblos have been inhabited continuously for hundreds of years, making them among the oldest permanent settlements still in use in North America today.

One reason Curtis was drawn to the Southwest Indian tribes was the opportunity they afforded him for an unusual glimpse into Indian life undiluted by the influence of European customs. In the early 1900s, many people still lived in traditional ways, deeply attached to their ancient culture and religious practices. Additionally, Curtis was fascinated by the strong relationship Southwest Indians had with their ancestral land, which in both its physical and metaphysical manifestations was at the centre of their history, tradition and beliefs. Virtually all practices revolved around it.

Curtis's immersion in the landscape and cultures of the Southwest Indian is evident in the photographs he took in the region. These images, and the written records that Curtis produced over several decades, mirror his deep understanding of the unique geo-cultural interplay of people and place.

Exhibit Credits

After decades of obscurity in rare book rooms and private collections, Curtis's remarkable photographic record of North American Indian life from 1900 to 1930 is now experiencing a renaissance, as scholars and other enthusiasts rediscover a dramatic visual testimonial to the proud history of North America's native peoples.

The photographs featured in this exhibit are drawn from the archive and personal collection of Christopher Cardozo, widely recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on Curtis and his photography. Cardozo is the author of six books on Curtis and is the founder/chair of the Edward S. Curtis Foundation.

“We are proud to bring this exhibit to Palma de Mallorca as part of our efforts to illustrate the diversity of our cultural heritage”, said Valerie O’Brien, Assistant Cultural Attaché at the United States Embassy in Madrid.