Hopi woman grinding corn, Arizona. Kolb Bros. Copyright 1911. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZ62-119610. bibliographic record
Some commercial photographers produced images of individuals not for the individuals' own use but to sell as ethnographic
documentation of foreign or “exotic” peoples.
A recent project to catalog groups of images relating to Native Americans demonstrates how many commercial firms embarked
on such efforts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As with the well-known Curtis photographs, the images
frequently focus on women and their activities.
Searching the Collection
The recently produced catalog records describing the groups are found in both the Library of Congress and Prints and Photographs
online catalogs.
A finding aid, entitled “Indians of North America: A Guide to LOTs,” provides a convenient listing of all the groups, both
those that were recently cataloged and those cataloged earlier and listed in the Divisional Card Catalog.
