Related Work by Curtis: Native and Non-Native Subjects

In the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

LOT 4841: Harriman Expedition (178 photographs).

Curtis was an official photographer for the 1899 Harriman Expedition to Alaska. During this two-month scientific survey of the Alaskan wilderness, he documented landscapes, flora, fauna, and other geological features. Nearly one hundred images also reveal life in the area's Tlingit Indian and other Native communities including family portraits, seal hunting, traditional homes and structures, totem poles, and basketry.

LOT 10512: Roosevelt Family (32 photographs).

After viewing a Curtis portrait of a Seattle girl in a Ladies Home Journal photography contest, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Curtis to the East Coast to photograph the Roosevelt family. Taken in 1904, these warm-toned gelatin silver prints show the Roosevelt children at play (in some views with Curtis) on the estate; the family home; and surrounding area.

PH - Curtis, E., no. 1 (A size) "The Vanishing Race," 1904.

This sepia-toned, platinum print of a small group of Navajos riding horses also appears in the portfolio volume one of The North American Indian. As Curtis struggled to support his family and his ambitious projects, he occasionally sold individual master prints made from special photographic processes.

PH - Curtis, E., no. 2 (A size) Sunset Trail, 1921.

A gelatin silver print of a nude, non-Native woman with long hair standing on a beach at sunset.

In the Rare Book Division, Library of Congress

Curtis, Edward S. The North American Indian; being a series of volumes picturing and describing the Indians of the United States, and Alaska. 20 vols. and 20 portfolios of photogravures. Seattle and Cambridge, Mass: E.S. Curtis, 1907-30. LC Call Number: E77 C97.

One of the original 272 complete published sets with twenty volumes of illustrated text and twenty portfolios of large-size photogravures, this work consists of 2,222 plates and ethnological information about more than eighty Native American tribes. To create the photogravures, each copper plate was individually inked and run through a hand press. Copy negatives for many of these photogravure images were made by the Library's Photoduplication Service and noted in a reprint of The North American Indian, which is housed in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division.

National Digital Library, Library of Congress/Ameritech

Northwestern University, Edward S. Curtis: the North American Indian Photographic Images (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ienhtml/curthome.html ).

A digital image of every photogravure published in the original, complete set of Curtis's North American Indian from Northwestern University is available on this web site. Bibliographical and introductory materials to illuminate the historical context as well as a variety of search strategies to make the collection accessible to scholars, the K-12 community, and the general public is provided.

In Other Institutions

The Library of Congress does not maintain these sites. Users should direct concerns about these links to their respective site administrators or webmasters.

National Anthropological Archives, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Collection name: Photo Lot 59, The Library of Congress Copyright Deposit Collection of American Indian Photographs (1860s-1930s; 5,600 items).

About one-thousand Curtis photographs which were submitted for copyright at the Library of Congress were transferred from the Library to the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives in the 1950s. Most of these prints were duplicates, but not all. The images are housed in a larger collection (photo lot 59) which is arranged by tribal group not by photographer. The collection is open to public viewing.