- An exhibit like
this with the variety

of print processes,
print mediums,

the depth of the work,
all the ephemera,

the post cards, milk
cards correspondence,

exhibition like
this had probably

only been seen 10
times in the last

100 years in the United States.

Even Edward Curtis,
when he did exhibitions,

didn't show anywhere
near the variety

of what you're seeing here.

He typically only showed
his platinum prints

and/or his photo gravures.

So, it's a really
exceptional exhibit,

and I'm thrilled with my staff

back in St. Paul, Minneapolis,
who helped put it together

and then of course the gang here
at the Trout for putting it up.

So, when I think, again,

thinking from 30,000 feet
as the new saying goes,

what do I think
about with Curtis?

The single thing that to me most

coalesces who he was
and what he was doing

is this quote from 1900.

He's just beginning the project,

he's just gotten the idea

of creating a comprehensive
permanent record

of Native American cultures,
Native American people.

And he writes to a
colleague and friend of his,

"It's such a big dream.

"I can't see it all."

And just to begin with
what an incredible

gift that would be to have
a sense of life mission,

to have a dream that's so big

you can't even understand it.

And it was very
perceptive of him

because he really had no idea
what he was getting into,

the magnitude, the sacrifices,
the length of time.

So also as I try and understand

this massive body
of work that is

two and a half million
words in the final text,

transcriptions of
language and music,

sound recordings, and of
course a lot of photographs.

I try to understand
that the thing

that comes up to me really
is beauty, heart and spirit.

If I try to tell you
what are the three

underlying components,
key components

of Curtis' work, it's
beauty, heart and spirit,

which to me form a legacy,

and in this case
a sacred legacy.

And here he is.

On the left is a self-portrait
when Curtis was about 30.

And on the right is
a photograph of him

in British Columbia in
front a baleen whale

when he was approximately 40,
in full field gear.

So he obviously was
a very handsome man.

Most people don't realize that
it was very unusual at the time,

he was six feet one,
piercing blue eyes,

amazing charisma,
and amazing willpower.

One of the stories I'll tell you
today was when Curtis went to,

Curtis became great friends
with Teddy Roosevelt.

So here you have
this man who grew up

in abject poverty to
age five in Wisconsin,

move to Minnesota,
abject poverty.

When he was 17 or 18,
he moved to the Seattle area.

And by the time he was 23 or 4,

he had bought half interest

in a small struggling
photo studio.

Seattle, it's important
to understand,

was an incredible boom town.

Other than San Francisco,
there was nothing west

of the Rockies that was
comparable to Seattle.

It was the gateway to the Yukon
and we had a gold rush, right?

So it was an incredibly
wealthy, powerful community.

But Curtis established
that position there.

And he won a photo contest
photographing children.

Teddy Roosevelt saw this
photograph in 1902 or 1903,

invited Curtis to come
and photograph his family.

So within a few years
of pulling himself,

in the south and his extended
family, out of abject poverty,

all of a sudden he's hanging out

with the president
of the United States.

Here's a young man with
a sixth-grade education

in a one-room schoolhouse,
primarily self-educated,

then all of a sudden he's

not only meeting
with Teddy Roosevelt

but Roosevelt was very
enamored of Curtis,

so they became great
personal friends.

So Curtis would literally go
out and spend the weekends

at the Roosevelt family compound

on Oyster Bay at Long Island
and hang out with the family

and make more photographs
of the family.

I mean if he did nothing else,

that alone to have grown
up in abject poverty

in rural Wisconsin, Minnesota,

and by the time he's
in his very early 30s

being great friends with the
president of the United States

is pretty amazing,
but there is much more.

So when he had the big dream
that he couldn't see it all,

this was the primary
component of it.

This is a set of rare books

that comprised 20 volumes,
20 portfolios,

two and a half million words

of finished, edited,
significantly edited

by a major anthropologist,
text, 2,200 photographs,

transcriptions of
language and music,

comparative language studies.

So he would compare
Navajo and Apache

or Cherokee and Absaroak.

It is a tour de force.

I don't know of anything
like it in history

that was ever created.

And the fact it was
created primarily

by one human being with
no government existence
is really extraordinary.

There certainly are
some sets of rare books

that have been created

other places that
had significant

government support,
that were big.

But again nothing
compares to this

in terms of the
quality of the work,

the beauty of the work.

As you can see
everything was hand-done.

These are all beautiful
handmade papers

from India, Japan or Holland.

Everything was hand printed,
all the 2,200 photographs

many of which you see
on the gallery here

today are called photo gravures.

The basketry over here
is one good example.

Those are basically
photographic engravings.

So there were 2,200
photographic engravings

in each of the close to 250
sets that were completed.

I mean the numbers again
are just staggering.

So Curtis tried to get
this going for five years

and he realized what an
immense project it really was.

It's one thing that you
have a vision you can't see,

but when you start
actualizing it,

you understand
how big, how huge,

how complicated, how expensive
it is. That's the Morgan quote.

So 1905 in December,
Curtis, excuse me,

Teddy Roosevelt gives Curtis
a letter of introduction

to meet J.P. Morgan, and
Morgan at the time, of course,

was one of if not the wealthiest
human beings in the world.

He was also a major,
major art collector

and a really major bibliophile.

The collection at the
Morgan Library, New York

today is astounding.

So he goes in to
meet with Morgan

and tells him about
his great dream.

And Morgan listens very intently

and Morgan's secretary of 25
years is there in the meeting.

And Morgan says no,
not interested, not
going to back you.

And for most mere mortals,

if J.P. Morgan, in
his 18-foot ceiling,

wood paneled, oriental
carpeted office said, "No,"

that was it,
you turned on your heels,

and walked out the door.

Curtis asked Mr. Morgan
if he would at least

do him the courtesy of
looking at the photographs.

Morgan had not seen
the photographs,

yet he just turned the vision.

Morgan looked at 10 or 15
of Curtis' 20 photographs.

According to Morgan's secretary

changed his mind for only
the second time in 25 years

of what was essentially
a business decision.

So, it was a big deal.

I'm going to show you examples

of the different mediums
in which Curtis worked.

And examples,
not the same images,

but all these mediums are here

in the exhibit between
the two floors.

This is something
called a cyanotype,

and virtually no people
have seen Curtis cyanotypes.

This is something that
he did in the field

and were typically thrown away.

So in my 40 plus
years of collecting,

I've only been able to
acquire about 20 of these.

They're particularly
near and dear to my heart,

because I would bet
you dollars to donuts

that Curtis handled
these prints,

the cyanotypes,
because this was done

in the field
perhaps the same day

but certainly
within a day or two

of having made the negative.

And this is basically
his Polaroid.

This was a way he could see
what he had in the negative

and make a decision
whether he needed

to reshoot the negative,

get the white a
little different,

the composition a
little different.

So cyanotype, this would've been

the first thing Curtis
created after the negative.

These are silver prints,
so when Curtis was in the field

which would typically
be for months at a time,

he would come back to
his studio in Seattle

and look at all the cyanotypes

and look at the
negatives and decide

this one we're going
to go further with,

we're going to make more
prints and see what we have.

That one's no good and we're
going to throw it aside.

So Curtis did somewhere
between 40 and 50,000 negatives

and edited that down to 2,200.

So anything that you see

that were in the
books and portfolios

or anything that you see,
really anything here,

is highly, highly edited.

There were over
10, 15 photographs

that were discarded to get down

to the ones that you
see here or in the book.

So this is just a simple
untoned silver print.

So he looked at the cyanotype,

but the cyanotypes don't have

great subtlety
oftentimes or detail,

whereas the silver prints do.

And this would've
been done as soon

as he got back into the studio.

Then in terms of prints
that he would've offered

for sale or for exhibition,

this is a really
important process.

It's called gold toned
printing out paper.

So it's photographic paper

but it was literally
toned with a gold solution

and other chemicals to
give it that beautiful

warm sepia which is the hallmark

of essentially all
finished Curtis prints.

And this is historically,

probably Curtis' most
important photograph.

It was done in the summer of
1900 as I mentioned earlier.

He had this watershed experience
and he had this big dream

that was started,
this two weeks in the field.

Then this is his key
image from that time.

This is Curtis' most
valuable photograph

and certainly one of
his most important.

Most of you will
recognize this is Geronimo.

And Geronimo is photographed
by Curtis in 1905,

the same year Roosevelt
wrote the letter

of introduction to J.P. Morgan,

and this happens to
be a platinum print.

This is called the border print.

So the border that
you see around that

which today people
would do with overmats

Curtis actually did
in the dark room.

He exposed the two borders there

to more light after he
had exposed the negative

and that created those borders

an aesthetic decision
that he made.

Here is the Kanatika Girl.

And this is one,
this is a photo gravure,

the most common process
Curtis worked in.

But I like to use
it to illustrate

what I think is a very,
very, very important

critical point for Curtis' work.

This work was a
co-created body of work.

This was not Edward Curtis

going out and
taking photographs.

This was Edward Curtis working

with Native people to make
beautiful, compelling images.

So with this young woman,

to me you see a sense of
intimacy, authenticity,

openness, vulnerability.

In today's parlance,
she was very, very present.

And Curtis was good
enough technician,

had good enough vision to
be able to capture that

and then translate
it into a photograph.

And that's another
really important thing

to think about
when you're looking

at Curtis' or any
photographer's work.

Are you looking at the image

which could be digital,
it could be a platinum print,

it could be a photo gravure?

Or are you looking
at the actual object,

the platinum print,
the photo gravure?

And another thing that's
quite extraordinary

about Curtis is he had a gift

for making beautiful objects.

Some of them are so strong.

Well, again, the fact that
all of us are here today

112 years after this
negative was made

still looking at it

and generally admiring
it and oftentimes

we get very moved by it

really speaks to the fact
that Curtis not only knew

how to make great
compelling images,

but also could make
beautiful objects,

and it's what I call objects

imbued with spirit
because some of them

touch people so deeply.

We've sent exhibitions to
40 countries and we have--

Every opening I've gone
to from Peru to Paris

to Sweden to South Africa,

I've seen people moved to tears.

Italy probably more
than any place else,

but we would expect that
of the Italians, right,

that they're going to be
very emotional about it.

Again, regardless of
age, race, gender,

economic status,
any criteria I can think of

that you'd want to
define human beings by,

it doesn't matter, young or old.

I've seen six and
eight-year-old children

incredibly moved by this work,

and I've seen, well,
my oldest client

is 90 and still collecting.

So it is just the
universality of his work

is one of the things
I'm addressing here.

It's because he captured
the essence of things.

He made many, many very
compelling artistic photographs,

and that's another
really important thing

to understand with Curtis.

Was he a photographer
or an ethnographer?

He was both very, very clearly.

And with his photographic work,

it was mostly about
creating works of art.

He was very clear about this,

in the very beginning,
the introduction to volume one

of that 20 volume, 20 portfolio

set of works that we saw in
the second or third slide.

He says, "I am not
creating documents.

"I am endeavoring to
create works of art."

And he is obviously
sometimes criticized

because people think he either
exploited the Native people

or he wasn't
ethnographically accurate.

And if you're looking for
ethnographic accuracy,

you go and look at the two
and a half million words

of language, transcriptions
of language and music,

the incredible ethnographic text

about the individuals,
about their tribal groups,

about their life ways,

and this immense
treasure of information,

it is ethnographically right on.

He in fact he had to go in front

of a blue-ribbon committee
at the Smithsonian

before Morgan would
cut the first check.

So Curtis was seriously vetted

and that committee was
not very positively

disposed towards Curtis
because here is this guy

with this sixth-grade education

and he's getting
what seem to people

a king's ransom to
do this project,

and they weren't,
all these Easterners

with the PhDs and they've been
heads of different committees

and different
institutions for years.

They're not getting anything

and this up start
from the Midwest

is getting all this money.

So it was not an easy audience,

and again Curtis passed
with flying colors,

but that was the written work.

The visual work, again, is
intended to be artistic work.

Let me come back to this slide.

So the important
anecdote that this

brings to my mind
is Isabella Yande,

who is a surrealist,
a magic realist writer,

internationally known,
award-winning.

She's been interviewed by
the CBC a few years ago,

and I have been trying
to communicate to people

what the difference
was with Curtis

trying to do things
artistically versus

factually versus
ethnographically
with the images.

They summed it up
so beautifully.

The interviewer said to Isabel,

excuse me, you're
now an award-inning,

magical realist writer.

Magical realism has
nothing to do with reality

as most of us experience
or know it, right?

And she said but you were
a journalist for 20 years,

so that must have been a
very hard transition for you

to go from journalism,
which is all about

independently verifiable facts,

to magical realism which has
nothing to do with the facts.

And Yande said, "Yes, uh-huh."

And Keroloff thought
about, the interviewer

thought about for
a moment and said,

that's almost like you're
trying to tell people

a deeper truth than the
facts would allow you.

So it's like poetry,
it's like any great art.

So I'm showing you this,
the original, one of the
Kanatika girl.

This is a finished print.

This is how Curtis
decided to interpret

and present his negative.

This was the same negative

before Curtis did any
of his magic to it.

It's cropped differently,
it's black and white.

It's a lovely image, but in
my opinion it does not sing.

It's not something that would
be etched in your memory.

And then we go to this.

So you see in the
lower left-hand side,

the unedited or unchanged.

You see on the lower right
Curtis' finished print,

and then you see
to other negatives

that he would've created
in that same session

on that same day.

And this is very typical of him.

He would find something that
he knew was interesting.

He was working with a
60-pound camera and tripod.

It had a black cloth,

and he could only
see the ground glass

which took the image upside down

and reversed it left to right.

And he had to be
able to visualize

what the finished
image would look like

while he's under a black cloth,

what this image could
look like, I should say

when you reversed it,
turned it upside down,

and then did all the
other things he did.

So it's really
quite extraordinary.

Curtis also did a very
small body of work

which I just call
experimental work.

He took a photograph.

You can see on the
left-hand side of the image,

there's some pencil marks.

You can also see them a couple
of other places in the image.

So Curtis would
outline the image.

He would project it
on to canvas or paper,

trace some of the outline,

and then take it
down and then paint

different chemistry
and different colors

that would then get exposed.

And very, very
small body of work.

I've only been able to find

10 or 12 of these
in four decades.

Here's another piece
of experimental work.

And then in the
volumes and portfolios,

not only was he
creating these books

that today cost
$35 million to create.

Again, I mean, it's
just staggering

the complexity
and the commitment

that it took to create this.

Most people would've
been very happy

if they could do all that

and create sepia
colored photo gravures.

Curtis decided he wanted
to do hand-colored photo
gravures as well.

So in the engraving
company in Boston

that did all the
printing for him,

someone was there hand coloring.

I haven't actually done
the math for a long time.

Some of them may be
better at this than I am,

but 30 some images times 300.

100,000?

Who's good at math here?

30 times 300?
A hundred by a hundred?

So people hand
colored 100,000 prints

for this one small
part of this project.

And this is a gold tone.

This is a process
where Curtis realized

that by taking,
what was intended

to be a glass plate negative

instead of putting
it in the camera,

putting it in the enlarger

and exposing it to
the original negative,

he got a glass plate
positive, okay?

So the imagery had on
glass, we all know what,

well, they're generally
small but we look at
negative looks like.

He took that and created
a glass plate positive

which would be transparent.

He would've been able
to see through it.

He then took that
glass plate positive

and backed it with
a gold liquid wash.

And as far as I know,
it is the most luminescent

three-dimensional form
of photography that
was ever created.

Curtis loved them,
he was known for them.

In fact they were called
Curt-tones at the time.

So Scott Momaday
is a Pulitzer Prize winning

Native American author

who is quite enamored
of Curtis' work.

This is from one
of my early books.

It's this essentially
quality of this work,

the universality
of Curtis' work.

It is certainly
about Native people.

And it's about indigenous
people worldwide

in many respects.

But it's really about everybody.

There are aspects of his work
there are about everybody,

and I think we go back to
presence intimacy, connection,

being a human being.

So now we're, again,
a little more rapidly

going to go through
and look at some

different culture
geographic areas.

So some of you know
Curtis only photographed

from the Dakota's
West to the Pacific,

and from Northern
Mexico to Alaska.

All the tribes east of that

had to either have been
forced to move, exterminated,

or their culture is so decimated
that there is very little left.

And I don't want to dwell
too much on extermination,

but it's a staggering statistic
that in 1600s it's estimated

that there were 20 to
25 million Native people

living on this continent,

hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds

of different tribal groups,
so 20 to 25 million.

1900 was a serious
scientifically valid census

kind of the whole
country, 250,000.

Right, so you're talking
about 99% attrition rate.

And that's just physically,
we also obviously

completely decimated
the culture.

So what native have been through

and the fact that
they are still with us,

in many cases thriving,
is really extraordinary.

So now we're int he
Pacific northwest,

and again Curtis
worked out of Seattle,

so this was sort of
home territory for him.

So most people
know Curtis either

for his portraits
or his landscapes,

but he was also a very gifted
still life photographer.

This is titled
Puget Sound Baskets.

This is called Lummi Type.

And this was the first
Curtis image I had ever seen.

I just spent six months living

in a very isolated
village in Mexico.

I saw three Caucasians.

I was people who had never
seen a Caucasian before,

and I was too young
and stupid to know

what a crazy and sometimes
dangerous situation this was.

I just kept on doing
what I was doing.

When I first saw this
photograph, it was a
day and a half

after getting back to the
United States from that trip

and I was staying
with a friend of mine

who I had gone through
photography school
with in Colorado

and she was living about 20
miles outside of Albuquerque.

And that was my
decompression point

coming back to the States.

I showed her some of my
sepia-colored photographs
I had done on that village,

and she said, "You got
to see this guy named

"Edward Curtis and
see his photographs."

So we hopped on the
Volkswagen Beetle the next day

and drove 20 miles into town.

And I can tell you exactly--

This was the cover
image on the book--

I can tell you exactly
what shelf it was in,

what orientation in
the bookshop it was in,

where the sunlight
was coming from.

I mean this is so
indelibly etched in my mind

and it was such a
deeply transformational

experience for me.

Okay, more northwest
coast imagery.

California.

And many of us are completely
unaware that there were

tribal groups living
in California.

It was actually culturally
extremely diverse and rich.

There are many, many,
many tribes there.

Plains and plateau which is
west of the Great Plains.

And north.

Chief Joseph, again,

one of the great leaders
of the 19th century.

Curtis was actually
invited to participate

in Joseph's reburial.

I believe Curtis was
the only non-Native

who was invited to do that.

Joseph was an
incredible human being.

And it was his
friendship with Joseph

and Red Cloud to a lesser
degree, with Geronimo,

that gave him such
incredible access

to native populations who were

understandably very standoffish

and very suspicious of
white culture at that point.

Classic Curtis image,
the Kutenai Duck Hunter.

There was a benefit
auction for a really

wonderful wildlife
rehabilitation center

in St. Paul that
I participated in

and donated a print to.

And I initially
said, oh, let's do

the Kutenai Duck Hunter because

it looks like from
this present country,

it's actually Southern Alberta.

And I talked about the
title, Kutanai Duck Hunter.

Wildlife rehabilitation? No, no.

So we switched to a variant.

I love the sense of mystery.

Again, this sense of connection,

this sense of presence.

This man is clearly
very much there.

And even today with all
the photographs being made,

in my opinion is very, very--

And all the incredible
equipment people have

and the amazing studios.

It is really, really rare

in the entire history
of photography

that you find people
who are connected

with the photographer as
Curtis' recipients were.

And to me it speaks the fact

that these people,
the Native people

wanted this record preserved
as much as Curtis did.

And, again, going back to being

a collaborative
co-creative process.

Nez Perce Babe.

Assiniboine, which
is Southern Alberta.

Also I've always
loved Curtis ephemera.

That's another thing
that's very, very unusual

about this exhibition.

There's a lot of
interesting ephemera here.

Plate covers,
letters, post cards,

all aspects of this incredible
enterprise that Curtis did.

So these are both from
the Alaska Harriman
Expedition, 1899.

Harriman was a contemporary
and pretty much

an equal of J.P. Morgan in
terms of power and wealth.

And he invited
Curtis and rescued

a lost group of
mountaineers in 1898

through this chance
coincidence, chance happening.

Curtis was then invited by some

of the members of this
expedition to join them,

to join them to become
the principal photographer

for the Harriman
Expedition which was one

of the great scientific
expeditions of the 19th century.

Post cards.

Curtis and his company
that he created

to do this project were
incessantly insolvent

from the very beginning.

Again, Morgan said yes
to Mr. Curtis.

I'll give you
enough money to back

the field research
for five years.

They thought this would
take five years, not 30.

I'll give you the money
to do the field research,

but you got to figure
out the publishing,

and that was the really
expensive part again.

Today's dollars,
$35 million project.

So that weight
among all the others

was left on Curtis' shoulders.

So he was constantly struggling

any way he could to
raise additional funds,

whether it was creating a
Hollywood movie which he did,

giving lectures,
doing exhibitions,

whatever he could do
to raise money he did,

and this is one example.

And in the middle that's
Chief Joseph again.

This is one that I'm
particularly fond of.

It's a 16 by 20, excuse me,

a 12 by 16-inch
print that Curtis

did not tone for
whatever reason.

We'll never know, or sign.

Lower left-hand
corner you can see

the negative number
which indicates

that this was done in 1904,

so an early photograph
of a Hopi woman.

There's something ineffable
to me about this print.

I find it so compelling,
so emotional.

I can sense the sorrow,
but also the pride.

It is just one of my
favorite photographs

and very unusual for Curtis.

As I mentioned Curtis
did a Hollywood picture

trying to raise
money for the project

which was a failure.

It was critically a success

but people didn't
turn out for it.

It was also towards
the beginning

of the First World War.

And again if I haven't
mentioned earlier.

Curtis was a very gifted
multimedia artist.

So at this time people
are making photographs

and they made photographs
and they sold prints.

Curtis created this exhibition,
this multimedia performance,

that premiered at Carnegie Hall,

sold out Carnegie Hall either
two times or three times.

He commissioned a full orchestra

or 24-piece orchestra,
I shouldn't say full.

And the music was done by
Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan.

So he had a live orchestra.

He had two slide projectors.

He had a film camera and
he was up on stage talking.

So it was a real, true
multimedia experience.

This is something
I got very early on

that to me a very important
part of my collection,

and this goes back to
that idea of ineffability.

I've looked at this
for 35 years now.

I've not gotten tired of it.

I have no idea how many
times I've looked at it.

To me this is magic.

This was created
by a consciousness

that I will never
begin to understand.

I mean I can tell you, I know
what some of the symbols mean.

I know this was Northwest coast.

I know this is a shaman.

But what the
experience was like,

what it really meant,
I have no idea

and I'm a sucker for
things I can't understand.

So, Southwest, this
Curtis' signature piece,

the Vanishing Race.

This was done in 1904.

And this is
basically code speak.

I do not think
that Curtis believed

that literally this race
was going to vanish,

although it wasn't impossible,
again we go back to that

statistic of 25
million to 250,000.

It was not unthinkable that
they would disappear as a race.

But, I don't think
Curtis believed that.

But, the culture was
being decimated,

and that's what Curtis is
really interested in doing,

was preserving the
culture, the beliefs,

the records of the individuals.

Another one of my
favorite photographs.

I've seen this reproduced
in a magazine from 1905,

and then this print that I own.

And again there's
a magic about it,

the framing is so
atypical for Curtis.

Instead of seeing
the background,

seeing where the people
or dark background

to really focus on the people.

You got these two Hopi women
with the squash blossom hair

sitting on a window sill
peering out at Curtis.

Pretty fabulous.

Another well-known
image of Curtis'

called Son of the Desert.

This is an image
called Hopi Man.

This is a platinum print.

I think we have a
photograph here of it

in the exhibit somewhere.

I mentioned before the idea of
an object imbued with spirit,

and this is one of the
best examples I have.

I had looked at
this for 20 years

and 25 years ago I went down

in the vault where
I keep all this material
and brought this out.

And as soon as I
brought this one out and
started looking at it,

I had this intense
physical sensation

in the area of my heart,
my heart chakra, in other words.

And I didn't really understand
what it was all about.

I just knew this is a
favorite image of mine.

This sort of cool, I have
this weird sensation going on

but I had no idea what it meant.

And then a few weeks later
I went down the basement,
looked at it again.

When I go down to my
vault I might look at

30 or 40 or 50 images at a time.

I went down the same thing
happened with this image.

It didn't happen with
any other images.

And I've worked with
a Native American

medicine woman for a
quarter of a century,

and I told her about
this and she said,

well, of course, Chris.

That is touching your heart.

It is moving your heart chakra,

and that is why you
physically can feel

what normally we
might only understand.

And, again, so this to me is
an object imbued with spirit.

Curtis got the image so right.

He got the print so right,
it's so beautifully done

that it's like--
As a very, very famous

photo critic said to me
when looking at this--

It's like you're there at
the moment of its creation.

That's how beautifully
he translated his
experience of that.

The image on the left
is called Vash Gon.

That is a platinum print.

This is obviously one of
Curtis' favorite photographs

because he did it
as a platinum print,

a photo gravure, a silver
print, a hand colored print.

And then as you can
see on the right,

it's also done as a sculpture.

This is actually
the plaster master

to create a bronze bas-relief.

And I had only seen
the bronze bas-relief

once in Curtis' grandson's home

in the Puget Sound area.

And so, a year
and a half ago

my sister who watches
the Internet for me

to find interesting,
especially unusual things,
called me one day and said,

"There's this thing
going up on eBay

"and I have no idea what
it was and the seller

"doesn't have any
idea what it is."

And it's some sort
of plaster thing.

And I said, okay, send me photo.

I said, okay, that's Vash Gon.

And that looks like
it could be the model,

the original model for
the bronze template

that has survived in
Curtis' grandson's home.

And so I had Julie, my sister

email him back and
forth several times

to try and get more information.

And I think it was being
listed at $54 and 50 cents.

(audience chuckling)

And I expected that if it
was what I thought it was,

I expected that there'd
be many, many, many people

bidding on it and I've had
times at different auctions
where I've gone,

"Oh, this will sell for
$500", that sells for $5,000.

So if it's something
you really want,

you have to really
be clear and prepared

about what you're
willing to pay for

'cause you just don't know
what's going to happen.

So we went back and
forth and finally said,

could you get the owner to
get on the phone with me

because I can't
understand what this is,

and he's not giving
us enough information.

And she called him
and said, "Yeah,

"he'll talk to you
tomorrow at 2 p.m."

I said great, so I called him
up and he's a really nice man,

but he really couldn't
tell me much about it.

And I said, well, how big is it?
It's about 14 by 20 inches.

It's really heavy.

And I said, well, where
and when did you get it?

And he said, I have no
idea where we got it.

My wife and I are pickers,

so we go out to garage
sales, estate sales,

and find stuff and then
resell it to someone else.

He said, so, we got
it about 25 years ago

and we put it in our basement.

And because it's so heavy,
we didn't know what it was,

we didn't want to
move it so things

got piled in front of it
and piled in front it
and piled in front it.

And he said we're
moving in two months.

So we're having to get
rid of a lot of a stuff

and that's how we even
discovered we had this thing.

And I said, okay, well,

so that was a good
sign, I thought.

And then-- It's hard to see,

but in the lower
left-hand corner--

It says modeled by Alfred Lens

after Curtis photograph 1909

which is the year of Vash
Gon photograph was made.

It's exactly what's in the
bronze in his grandson's home.

So I'm thinking, you know,
this is probably the real deal.

So then my conundrum was, okay,

I think it's the real deal.

And if it's the real deal,
I don't have anything like this

in my entire 4 or 5,000
object collection.

What am I willing to pay for it?

So I struggled and I
lost sleep that night

and I finally came
up with a number.

I don't even
remember what it was.

And Julie was bidding for me.

And so the next day at 12:07
or whatever it went off.

And so Julie called me at
12:08 and said, "We got it."

I said, great, what do
we have to pay for it?

"$54 and 50 cents."

(audience laughing)

And it graces a
very prominent place

in my living room at this point.

So here's a border
print of Vash Gon.

This is Hopi Man.

And again this is another--
If someone tries to tell me

that Curtis manipulated
the Native people

in to doing what he wanted done,

this guy is not going
to take directions

from anybody as many of the
other people he photographed.

Navajo Medicine Man.

Again that sense of
ineffability of a consciousness

that created this and
is performing this

that I will never understand.

Beautiful still life.

Hopi Snake Priest.

A Hopi boy awaiting the
return of the snake dancers.

This print is very
unusual for Curtis,

as you probably noticed.

Almost all of Curtis' portraits
have a dark background,

and it's like the
image the human being

is coming out of an
unknown background.

In this case very different.
This is a Taos man.

This is perhaps Curtis'
most well-known image.

This is Canyon De Chelly.

And Curtis spent three days here

trying to get the photograph
that would convey what he felt.

And he tried it with
three horseback riders,

five horseback riders.

I don't know if he went
to eight, nine and 10,

but he ended up with
these seven and the dog.

And those are thousand-foot
cliffs behind these riders.

And to me it so
beautifully exemplifies

man's insignificance
relative to nature.

I think that's
one of the reasons

most people find
it so compelling.

Hopi women with the
squash blossom hair.

They're up on the house top

overlooking the
central plaza where

a ceremony is being performed.

Great Plains.

Bear's Belly.

And again there's a
beautiful biography,

biographical information
on Bear's Belly

that talks about when he
was born, where he was born.

To become a man his--

I had to drink a
six pack of beer,

I don't remember what
else was my rite of
passage to become a man--

He had to go kill a bear with
his bare hands and a knife.

And when he went to do it,
the bear had two friends.

He killed all three bears
single handedly with a knife.

Red Cloud, again,

one of the really great,
great tribal leaders,

and great leaders.

So this is, again,
as a collector,

this is the kind of thing
that I absolutely love.

I've only seen two
reproductions of this.

I've never seen another
original print of this image.

I got it 20 or 25 years ago.

And I'd had it for a while
and then I went to an auction,
similar kind of thing.

There's a guy with
a white collar

and a bow tie who's
an investment banker.

And I've been bidding
against them on something
the day before.

I mean I wasn't even close.

And he came in to the
other auction house

the next day, and I really,
really wanted this.

And he was there
and I thought, okay,

I'm going to be blown
out of the water.

He left before this
came up for bidding.

So I had the other one
from 20, 25 years ago

and this came up at
auction about 10 years ago,

and I really wanted
this one also.

And I ended up getting it.

Again it was one of
these things where

I don't remember what
the opening bid was

but it wasn't insignificant.

But I put my paddle up.
Nothing else happened.

Hammer down.

Paddle number 162, it's yours.

And I was absolutely elated.

And my assistant
who had been with me

for seven or eight
years at that point

had the catalog at home and I
said I got lot 57. I'm so happy.

I've never seen
anything quite like it.

She said, well, Chris,

(laughing)

you have the same man in
another photograph that
was taken the same day.

So again, as a collector
to have a photograph

that is super, super rare,

that's never been reproduced
in the books or anything,

and then to have
full frontal portrait

and the profile,
it's just, okay.

I was blessed.

Piegan Dandy, great
photograph of Curtis'.

Curtis did not photograph--

About 30% or 35% of Curtis'
photographs are women.

And that's because it's typical
with indigenous societies,

they're certainly as active
as men, probably more so,

but they don't interact
with the outside world

as much as men would.

So Curtis' photographs of
women are somewhat rare,

and his photographs in
winter are very scarce

because he was out with a
60-pound camera and tripod,

fairly primitive materials.

And just the coldness and
dealing with the elements

made it very difficult to
photograph in the winter.

This is a little triptych
from the Black Hills.

This is a Peigan image
called the Travois.

The Travois, those are teepee--

Tent poles that you
see the horses moving

all their earthly
possessions on.

Which is sort of extraordinary
that every season

they would have to move all

their earthly possessions
and go to a better climate.

And Scott Momaday, who we
saw quote from earlier on

about the ineffability,

about the essential qualities
of Curtis' photographs,

talked about when he
first saw this image

he'd never seen it before.

He saw it as a reproduction
in a store, gallery,

and he was moved to tears
and he didn't understand

why this image
moved him so deeply.

And he, doing a little
bit of research,

discovered these
were his people.

This was his tribal group.

This is Horse Capture.

Horse Capture's grandson
George Horse Capture

who became a really
noted, esteemed

Native American scholar and was

the first curator of
the National Museum

of the American Indian.

When he was in his 40s,
he was very dejected,

very unhappy, a pretty
profound alcoholic.

And someone told him that
there was a photograph

of his great grandfather
in these Curtis' books.

And he discovered
that there was a set.

And he lived, George
in lived in Montana

and he discovered that
there was a complete set

at Gonzaga University.

So he reached out to one
of the brothers there

who said, certainly
come in and take a look

and I'll show you the
original photograph.

He came in and looked at it.

And I can't tell
you this was the

only thing or the single
most important thing

that his life changed.

He then saw this photograph
of his great grandfather,

read his history, read about one

incredible human
being he was,

all his exploits, his
personal integrity.

And then he went to University
of Indiana Bloomington

where they have some
of the sound recordings

that Curtis made,

and he heard two or three
sacred private family songs.

And that changed his life.

So he went from being
a dejected alcoholic,

to becoming a great,
noted esteemed

Native American scholar.

So that's pretty much
it for the Curtis.

So really quickly
what I'm doing,

why I continue to do
this after 45 years

when most people probably
would've gotten bored,

is this is all about
bringing this work

to the world at this point.

My little company
and I are doing

all kinds of things including

a 10,000-print
repatriation of images.

So, with Horse Capture's family,

we've sent six or eight images

back to them,
Red Cloud's family,

individuals who may
be more prominent

but we're able to identify

and we're doing this
repatriation project.

We're doing all kinds of things
to bring the imagery which is

paramount for me and all
this cultural information

in the forms of
reproduction to these books

back to Native people.

And this is one of
my favorite examples.

This is Art Seater
whose great grandfather--

You can see photographed
there in a Curtis photograph

with the wonderful top knot.

And if I had enough hair left

I'd probably be tempted
to do the same thing.

And I was giving a talk
in Seattle two years ago.

And a friend of mine said, well,

I've got a Native American
medicine man friend

who would like to come and
do a blessing for your talk.

I said wonderful.

Ask him if he had any ancestors
who worked with Curtis.

She came back the next day
and she said, yeah, he did.

His name was Bull Bear.

And I said that sounds
kind of familiar

but I'm not connecting with it.
Ask him again, would you?

She went back to him and
said--actually his name is Bear
Bull.

That was the first
photograph I purchased.

The woman was the
first photograph I saw.

A day later I was in
Boulder and found people

at the archive,
and I purchased that.

Okay, it gives me
chills thinking that

after 42 or 3
years of doing this

and floating through
time and space,

not having idea that Art
existed, nor he that I existed,

and then being brought
together by this work,

it was really fabulous.

And he's obviously
pretty happy about it.

We had a great time
with each other,

and, yeah, it was great.

We've also been doing many
more contemporary exhibits.

So the exhibit you're seeing
here is purely vintage work.

And the vintage work
has gotten so expensive

and so valuable and so
difficult to replace

that I'm not actually
going to be doing

vintage exhibitions
past this winter.

This show goes to Ohio,
to Capital University,

and then that's it for me.

I'm 70, I'm going to rest
on my laurels for a while

and stop doing the
vintage exhibitions.

They're just too
expensive, too difficult,

too time consuming,
too much management.

But we are doing, trying to
do more contemporary exhibits.

So this exhibit which was at
the library in Minneapolis.

This exhibit we
had a guest book,

and I was really--
They had more visitors

come to this exhibit than
any previous exhibit.

More visitors of color,
more Native people,
come to this exhibit.

It was a huge success.

I'm going through
the guest book.

I'm seeing all these really
eloquent erudite comments.

People from Australia,
from Russia, Scandinavia.

They're talking about
personal identity,
about cultural identity.

They're talking about history
and repeating the stakes

and how we need
to learn from it.

I mean, really
great, great themes.

And I was very moved by them.

I think it was almost
next to the last thing

was someone from Russia.

Again, very interesting
eloquent comment.

And I'm feeling very
moved by it all.

And then I opened this page.

Yeah.

I'm like, okay.

However many nights
I didn't get sleep

and whatever else over
the last 45 years,

this is the kind of thing
that makes it all worthwhile.

So as I mentioned
earlier we've sent

exhibitions to 40 countries.

This is Seoul, South Korea.

Gold tone like you see up there.

I briefly mentioned
that we have recreated

Curtis' entire
2,200 photographs,

two-and-a-half million word,
hand colored prints,

transcriptions of
language and music.

We've spent the last four years

and 40,000 hours
recreating these.

And I just work
with a foundation,

a couple of friends of
mine, and then myself,

and we just donated
15 complete sets,

photographs and a DVD
to tribal colleges.

And I'm hoping to
do more of those

as funds become available.

I don't think I ever didn't
appreciate what Curtis did.

But if I ever was so
stupid to not appreciate

the complexity and efforts
that he had to go through,

boy, I'm a believer now.

He even fold out
maps in these books.

I mean, it's just amazing.

Occasionally during the
question and answer period,

people want to know how
I ended up in Mexico

and how again what my
connection to this work was.

And this is it,
a professor of mine in 1971

asked me to go to
Mexico to make the film.

The film never happened.

I just driven 75 hours
after saving money

for five months to
have enough money

to go down and help
work on the film.

The film I got,
I found this door

in this little tiny town
in the mountains of Oaxaca.

Allen comes through it and
says, "Oh Chris, I should've
called or written you.

"I decided not
to make the film."

And I was a little
disappointed but I said, okay,

I've been promised a
log cabin to live in.

He said, "Oh, well some
other friend showed up."

And I said, okay, how
long are they here?

"They're here for
another two weeks."

Okay, is there a hotel in town?

There is one nine-room hotel

run by the most wonderful,

three spinster sisters
who are just fabulous.

And they took me in and I spent
the next week and a half there.

And then I came back and I said,
well, what else can I do?

So, Allen, I'm here,
I'm planning on
being here for months

and I've got my 10-year-old
Volkswagen Beetle

and all my camera equipment,
what am I going to do?

He said, "I know
there's this village

"about 60 miles from here,
why don't you check it out?"

So I went up.

I spent six months there
over the next year.

And this is a woman, Otilla
and her niece and nephew.

This is an Easter procession.

So it was a
breathtaking experience,

and I had never seen
Curtis' work at this point.

So unbeknownst to
me I was doing,

I was really following
his footpaths.

So I not only did thousands
and thousands of negatives,

I sepia toned them
which was something

I did experimenting with
in school before this.

I collected material culture,

did sound recordings
and did film footage.

All the things that Curtis--

I didn't do any of
it anywhere as deeply

or as well as Curtis,
but it was the same path.

And so that will explain to you

when I got to that little
bookstore in Albuquerque,

months and months later,
why I still remember

what shelf that book was on.

I mean it was like this
is what I've been doing

and here it is.

Last slide.

This is Curtis just
before his death.

And to me it's so poignant.

A woman had written
to him in 1951,

one year before his death.

He was 83, and asked
for his autograph.

She was an autograph collector.

It's a little hard to read
his writing, which was
quite shaky at this point.

But he made this
photograph of himself

and then sent it back
with his autograph.

And when you look
at his early works,

some of which you'll see
here his early letters,

they were all done in really

beautiful hand-made paper for
a simple one-sided letter.

He would take a piece of paper
and fold it over, deckled edges,

and beautiful envelopes.

Everything was done so
elegantly and so beautifully,

and here's a simple
photograph of him

towards the end of his life
and the shaky hand writing.

But he is reaching out to
this woman very kindly.

That's it.

(audience applauding)