#NativeAmerican#Photography#Auction Edward Curtis spent thirty years and what would now be hundreds of millions of dollars photographing a version of America he believed was vanishing. The result, The North American Indian, was never finished the way he imagined it — only around 257 of a planned 500 sets were ever produced, and just 157 survive intact today. This is one of them.
What sets this copy apart is not only its rarity but its clarity. Specialists describing the portrait of Bear's Belly note the three-dimensional precision of the sitter's gaze, the texture of his fur garment rendered with a sharpness that feels impossibly contemporary for a photograph made over a century ago. The set also carries a second American story: it was once owned by Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, with Andrew trading two of his own watercolors to acquire it. Two masters of American realism, a century apart, drawn to the same haunted, beautiful country.
This complete set will be on offer in Fine Books and Manuscripts, including Americana, with the live auction taking place 25 June in New York.
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This video explores Edward Curtis's \"The North American Indian,\" one of the most expensive and ambitious publishing projects of the 20th century. Spanning 30 years, the 40-volume work utilizes thousands of high-detail photographs to document the lives, cultures, and nuances of Native American tribes, serving as a monumental effort in preservation and American realism.
Can you imagine spending $100,000 on a book that would take 30 years to produce?
Well that was Edward Curtis and his North American Indian project. This was the most
expensive publishing project of the 20th century bar none and one of the most important as well.
Sotheby's is presenting a complete set of Edward Curtis's The North American Indian.
It comprises 20 volumes of photographs and 20 volumes of text including over 2,000 photographs
portraits, landscapes, everything rendered in crystalline detail. The project was started
in 1907 and completed in the 1930s. Nothing like it was attempted before and nothing like it has
been attempted since. Prior to Curtis we had depictions of Native Americans. We have projects
like Bodmer and Catlin but they were very static. They were very posed. They didn't really say much
about the agency of the individual who was involved in this. So Curtis was really offering
a much more candid, a much more exhaustive glimpse into these tribes and he also wasn't
lumping them together. He was very interested in drawing out the nuances between each and really
using this as a way of preserving how they lived, how they spoke, how they ate, and how they created.
By the time Edward Curtis begins The North American Indian in 1907 he's already an accomplished
and established photographer. He spends the next couple of decades devoted to this project. It
nearly breaks him. It nearly kills him. When he ends it in the early 1930s he is spent both
physically, emotionally, and definitely financially. Photographing the American West wasn't new by the
time Curtis comes around but his iconic image of Canyon de Chelly, it really resonates and it stays
and it becomes one of the most well-known photographs of the first part of the 20th century.
One of the most haunting portraits from the series is that of Chief Joseph. You know that
this is a documentary project but because of Edward Curtis's great mastery of his craft
the end result is an astonishingly beautiful portrait. So this to me feels very modern and
I'm not quite sure why. I love the fact that when people were collaborating with Curtis even if
they were coming in for a very formal portrait they still had some agency. He would have chosen
what he wore. Here you have all of this detail of the bird, his dress, the beads, and I think it's
just exquisite. If somebody told me this was taken yesterday I'd say no. So for me I feel
transported back in time not transported to yesterday. This feels so very much set almost
in the 19th century. I completely agree with you that it does feel like it's rendered with such
clarity that you would think it was made with a modern camera of today but even the tool that
Curtis was using has its basis in earlier photography. But one photograph that I do
feel is incredibly modern could have been made should have been made yesterday is the bear's
Just look at the detail that you get on the bear's fur and then he the sitter he's making
direct eye contact with you. You can see just the three-dimensional quality and he's really
holding your gaze with such conviction and strength. This is a portrait that would rival
any great photographer today. In today's money it would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars
to produce. It took over 30 years and if you wanted to own a copy it would have cost more
than a year's salary, about $3,000 then. There's a reason this project was so expensive. Research
assistants, ethnographers, photographic technicians, even printers, they all traveled with Curtis
across the American West for nearly 30 years. It took a lot. One of the things that's truly
extraordinary about this set, very few survive, so when Curtis set out on this project he was
going to produce 500 complete sets. Only about 257 of them were produced and only 157 of those
survived. Many ended up in institutions and they have stamps on the plates. They're in rough
condition because they've been handled for a century. This one is lovely and it also holds
the distinction of being owned by Andrew and Betsy Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth was of course one of the most
important American painters of the 20th century. Both Andrew Wyeth and Edward Curtis were masters
of American realism. You can see direct parallels through their work in the ways in which they were
able to capture the grandeur and melancholy of the American landscape. I think many of them are
not necessarily happy pictures. I think that a lot of them are very honest pictures. At the North
American Indian, Edward Curtis really wants to engage you with the individual lives, the lives
of these members of the tribes seen across the American West and to ensure that their stories
are told and preserved.
