Edward Sheriff Curtis
Cañon de Chelly—Navaho

Public Domain

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Images(2)

Artist Edward Sheriff Curtis (American, 1868–1952)American, 1868–1952

CultureAmerican

Titles

Cañon de Chelly—Navaho

Date1904

MediumPlatinum print

DimensionsImage: 16 3/4 × 20 1/2 in. (42.5 × 52.1 cm)
Sheet: 16 3/4 × 20 1/2 in. (42.5 × 52.1 cm)
Mat (support): 24 × 27 3/16 in. (60.9 × 69.1 cm)

Credit LineGift of Victor F. Germack and Lori Shepard Germack

Object number2020.122

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionIn 1906 Edward Sheriff Curtis embarked on a thirty-year project to photograph the Indigenous peoples of the United States and Alaska and their customs and traditions—an endeavor that eventually comprised forty thousand images of more than eighty Native American tribes. Because Curtis often directed—and sometimes even costumed—his subjects, some modern critics dismiss his images as romanticized portrayals of a “vanishing race,” stereotyped images of the “noble savage” unsullied by White culture. Nonetheless, Curtis’s project remains the most exhaustive representation of Native American culture and a persistent shaper of Americans’ popular imagination of the nation’s Indigenous peoples.
ProvenanceVictor F. Germack and Lori Shepard Germack, New York; given to MFAH, 2020.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Signed, recto, bottom right corner: CURTIS
Inscribed, recto, bottom left corner: COPYRIGHT 19[04?]

Signed, recto, bottom right corner: CURTIS

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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