The Harbinger of Catastrophe, 2017 (detail), Marianne Nicolson, Dzawada̱’enux̱w, b. 1969, glass, wood, halogen-bulb mechanism.
‘Double Exposure’ – Seattle Art Museum The Seattle Art Museum presents ‘Double Exposure’, featuring early 20th-century photographs by American photographer Edward S. Curtis (1868–1952) alongside contemporary works by indigenous artists Marianne Nicolson, Tracy Rector, and Will Wilson. June 14–September 9, 2018.]]>
Source: Seattle Art Museum
Edward S. Curtis is one of the most well-known photographers of Native people and the American West. Establishing a photography studio in Seattle in 1891, he made his first portrait of a Native American in 1895 of Princess Angeline (Kikisoblu), daughter of Chief Seattle. In 1906, funded by financier JP Morgan, he embarked on a decades-long project to photograph and document Native Americans and their traditional lifeways, resulting in The North American Indian, 20 volumes published between 1907 and 1930.
“Double Exposure” features over 150 iconic photographs by Edward S. Curtis, including famed portraits of historical figures such as Chief Joseph, Geronimo, and Princess Angeline. On view are rarely seen examples of his photos across many media: sepia-toned photogravures, platinum prints, sliver gelatin prints, cyanotypes, and orotones (goldtones), a process perfected by Curtis. The exhibition also includes one of Curtis’s cameras, lantern slides he used in multimedia lectures promoting his project, audio field recordings of languages and songs made on wax cylinders, and a projection of his docu-drama featurelength film made in British Columbia, In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914).
Threaded throughout the galleries of Curtis works are multimedia installations by three contemporary indigenous artists: Marianne Nicolson, Tracy Rector, and Will Wilson. Their work provides a crucial framework for a critical reassessment and understanding of Curtis’s representations of Native peoples and the complex response that Natives and others have to those representations today.
Related content
Metropolitan Museum hosts ‘Irving Penn: Centennial’ (exhibition, 2017)
Follow us on:
