The North American Indian

The North American Indian

The North American Indian is a twenty-volume study of Indigenous peoples in North America, published by photographer Edward Curtis between 1907 and 1930. Bruce Peel Special Collections houses all twenty volumes, each illustrated with photogravures, as well as accompanying portfolios of the photographic plates.

Curtis's photographs offer an example of the Pictorialist aesthetic popular among art photographers at the turn of the century. As explained on the Art Institute of Chicago's website, Pictorialists like Curtis "preferred romantic or idealized imagery over the documentation of modern life, welcoming artistic composition and soft focus." These characteristics permeate Curtis's photographs in The North American Indian. 

Iroquois artist Jeff Thomas has said that Curtis's photographs make him "long to hear the subjects' voices." With his project My North American Indian Volume 21, Thomas engages Curtis's images in order to—in Thomas's words—"challenge the silences in the archive; to build a new paradigm that connects past and present."

The complete set of Curtis's The North American Indian is one of the highlights of the Gregory S. Javitch Collection of books about North and South American Indigenous peoples and cultures. For information about additional photographs of Indigenous peoples housed in Bruce Peel Special Collections, see the Indigenous Photograph Collection.

Edward Curtis (photographer)

1907
32.5 x 26 cm (folio plates 57 x 46 cm)
E 77 C97 1907