Customer Reviews

Edward S. Curtis

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The author, Hans Christian Adam, is clearly an admirer of his subject, Edward S. Curtis. Curtis, who lived from 1868-1952, devoted his life to photographing the American Indian. In this book, Adam has included 172 pages of Curtis' most impressive photos along with 15 pages of text and a paragraph by Theodore Roosevelt on Curtis. Adam gives a clear picture of Curtis as a man as well as a photographer. In his photos, Curtis shows the life,customs,history,legends and religion of the Indians. To quote Adam: "Curtis wanted to make up for the injustices that members of his race had inflicted on the Indians". The high quality, large format, sepia photos are magical and leave a lasting impression on the viewer. The best part of the book is the photos. The only thing I do not like about the book is that the text is in English, German and French. This takes up space, but it does not detract from the photos and text. This book will make the reader want to see more photos by Curtis.

This is a nice Curtis collection of photographs with English text, with German and French translations at the bottom of each page. The book contains a 35-page discussion of Curtis and how he became the foremost photographer of American Indians and their lives. Most of the photographs are full page and are suitable for framing, as they are not encumbered by any text. Others are only partial page with captions on the page as opposed to being listed separately. The book has an 8x10 inch (200x250mm) format, so pictures are not as large as they are in some other books. The beginning of the book contains a portfolio of 12 full-page photographs of Indian Chiefs, but the identification is listed on a separate page with reference to the page on which the photograph is printed. Unfortunately, this identification page occurs after the portfolio pictures and none of these portfolio pages are numbered, so it is necessary to count from the pages that were numbered. The advantage to this scheme is that the photographs are more suitable for framing as there are no page numbers to remove, but it does make the identification of the individuals more difficult. Likewise, there are many full-page photographs in the rest of the book (without page numbers or text on the page), but here the caption is on the facing page, making the identification easier, while still making the pictures easy to frame. At over 200 pages in length, this book contains more than 150 photographs of Indian life as well as portraits of Indians.

While technically a paperback, the cover is stiff and should definitely give years of use. While this book may not contain as many photographs as some other Curtis books and it is not in as large a format, there are a lot of photographs here with useful text, giving a lot of value for the price, making it definitely a 5-star purchase.

The book has amazingly clear photos of lots of tribes. The emotion in the indian's faces is intriguing. The book I ordered was like brand new and delivered promptly at a good price.

I've been learning about the early Photography done by different men in the 1800s and up to 1930. Not only have I collected a large number of pictures but have learned alot that I didn't know prior to starting the project. This book will be passed down to one of my great grandsons whose taking an interest in the Native American culture. Going thru Amazon I've found a number of books by different Authors and have had great shipping by the sellers.

This is a beautifully photographed book by a photographer with obvious reverence for the American Indian.