Curtis, Edward Sheriff, 1868-1952

Edward Sheriff Curtis, American photographer and ethnologist, was born near Whitewater, WI, in 1868 and grew up in Seattle, WA. Fascinated with the Indians and their way of life he embarked on lifelong career dedicated to presenting "the very spirit of the Indian peoples" in photographs, film, recordings and print. George Bird Grinnell, an authority on Indians, appointed him Official Photographer to the Harriman Alaska Expedition in 1899. Curtis' dream of a comprehensive written and photographic record of the Indians resulted in a twenty volume, illustrated text and twenty portfolios of large-sized photographs. Before his work received financial backing by J. Pierpont Morgan, and the endorsement of Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, he gave lecture tours and sold subscriptions to the limited edition of his work to raise funding. By the time the work was finished, both his health and marriage were broken. In his later years, he moved to Los Angeles and opened a studio with his daughter, Bess Magnuson. He died Oct. 20, 1952, of a heart attack at age 84. In his lifetime he produced 10,000 recordings, 40,000 photographs, twenty volumes of text, a full-length motion picture with Kwakiutl people in 1914, and several books of Indian stories. The New York Times obituary described him as an authority on the North American Indian.