Agential dialogue in the photo-ethnography of Edward S. Curtis

• Published in: Dialectical Anthropology Vol. 39; no. 3; pp. 347 - 352
• Main Author: Whiteley, Peter M.
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.09.2015; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anthropology; Artists; Ethics; Ethnography; Libraries; Museums; Native American studies; Native Americans; Native North Americans; Social Sciences; Sovereignty; Canyon de Chelly
• DOI: 10.1007/s10624-015-9394-1
• ISSN: 0304-4092

After rediscovery in the 1970s, Curtiss images proliferated in every college dorm room and have been subjected to extensive critical review from anthropology, Native American studies, and cultural studies & Peter M. Whiteley whiteley@amnh.org 1 American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10624-015-9394-1&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10624-015-9394-1&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10624-015-9394-1&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10624-015-9394-1&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10624-015-9394-1&domain=pdf Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10624-015-9394-1&domain=pdf Web End = Agential dialogue in the photo-ethnography of EdwardS. At $3000$3850 (depending on the quality of the paper) for the seta price Mick Gidley remarks was staggering for the periodthis was an elite product indeed. [...]cheaper reprinting technology emerged, the volumes and images would remain an extremely privileged resource: less than 300 copies were printed, and the originals are still difcult of access for most. Charles Bird Kings magnicent portraits of the 1820s that formed a nucleus for the McKenney and Hall volumes (18371842) of early color lithographs; Catlins and Bodmers paintings (not to mention earlier Americanists like West, Trumbull, and Titian Peale); Schoolcrafts six-volume 1850s ethnological compendiumragged, often savagist, and uneven though it is; L.H. Morgans League of the Ho-d-no-sau-nee (1851) and Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines (1881); Western exploration volumes of the 1850s1870s, including the Whipple, Wheeler, Hayden, King, and Powell surveys; the Extra Census Bulletins of the early 1890s; and most of all the voluminous and richly illustrated (with lithographs and photographs) Annual Reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology beginning in 1879. [...]a more thoroughgoing historicization would have added much to Zamirs analyses.