Prayer to the Great Mystery: The Uncollected Writings and Photography of Edward S. Curtis

Description

From Library Journal Curtis traveled the West from 1906 to 1927, capturing America's Native people's on film before they "vanished." His photographs and accompanying commentaries became the 20-volume North American Indian, paired with 20 large folios of sepia-toned images. Today, these striking photographs are synonymous with a romanticized Indian past. For this small selection of Curtis's work, Kapoun, a dealer of Curtis's photographs, chose little-known images from the bound volumes, combining them with unpublished Curtis prints from the Library of Congress. Hausman (Turtle Island Alphabet, LJ 3/15/92) edited representative selections from the Curtis narrative. The result gives the flavor of Curtis's writing, but the quality of the photographs leaves much to be desired. Libraries holding books of Curtis's work (e.g., Florence Graybill and Victor Boesen's Edward Sheriff Curtis: Visions of a Vanishing Race, Promontory, 1994) may want to wait for better reproductions.Mary B. Davis, Huntington Free Lib., Bronx, N.Y.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more