Photographs
1923 Edward S. Curtis Native American Photogravure Native American Indian Portrait from "The North American Indian"
1923 Copyright, Photogravure by Edward S. Curtis, Native American Indian Portrait from his portfolio titled, "The North American Indian", Choice Extremely Fine.
This Photogravure is printed with a rich sepia tone on light tan paper. Produced after the original of 1923 Native American Indian Photogravure by Edward S. Curtis printed from his monumental portfolio titled, "The North American Indian." This overall sheet measures with its full, untrimmed margins to 22" x 18" and the image itself measures 15.25" x 11.5" being titled "Sam Ewing - Yurok" and Plate 437 of the Curtis Portfolio. The Photogravure is from the copyright of 1923 and published by the Suffolk Engraving Co. of Cambridge, Massachusetts. This image is of a very handsome, middle aged male of the Yurok Tribe - Native Americans who have lived for centuries in northwestern California near the Klamath River and Pacific coast.
Beginning in 1900 and continuing over the next thirty years, Edward Sheriff Curtis, or the "Shadow Catcher" as he was later called by some of the tribes, took over 40,000 images and recorded rare ethnographic information from over eighty American Indian tribal groups, ranging from the Eskimo or Inuit people of the far north to the Hopi people of the Southwest.
He captured the likeness of many important and well-known Indian people of that time, including Geronimo, Chief Joseph, Red Cloud, Medicine Crow and others. His greatest accomplishment was the completion of the monumental work titled "The North American Indian". This work, financed by J. P. Morgan, was comprised of more than 2,200 sepia toned photogravures bound in twenty volumes of written information and small images and twenty portfolios of larger artistic representations.
The work is considered the most comprehensive photographic record of Native American Indians as well as a collection of some of the most beautiful Art Photographs of the period.