Customer Reviews

The Image Taker: The Selected Stories and Photographs of Edward S. Curtis

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Featuring an informative foreword by Joe Medicine Crow, "The Image Taker: Selected Stories and Photographs of Edward S. Curtis" is a visually impressive 177-page paperback edition of the pictures, stories and lore of many North American Native American tribes. Divided into areas including the Southwest, Plains, Plateau, Northwest Coast, and Northernmost Coast, chapters cover hundreds of sepia photographs of Native American subjects taken between 1895 and 1926. Review continued of "The Image Taker"

Photographs and stories of over 80 native American tribes and sub-tribes west of the Misssissippi River are presented. The stories are taken from Curtis' monolithic, 20 volume work, "The North American Indian," with 20 accompanying portfolios. One important fact to note about "The Image Taker" is that the photographs chosen for it were frequently not previously chosen for publication because they were in bound volumes that were difficult to reproduce. So here we have essentially fresh photographs of high artistic and historic quality and value re-presented with edited text from a classic encyclopedia of tribal history, lore, mythology, and stories. Additional helpful information is presented in a two page chronology of the life of Edward Curtis, plus sources and notes (from "The North American Indian") of the twelve main chapter areas, and an added bibliography.

"The Image Taker" presents a treasured sampling of text and photographs from over 30 years of Curtis' work as a documentarian of Native American history. It is an invaluable resource to both scholars and those interested in Native American cultural enrichment studies and heritage.

This is a masterful work and not only for the Curtis images, but for the prose, layout, and content. In classic Hausman style, one of the editors, it captures the American native spirit as it is: true, clear, total human, and creatively brilliant.