Hollywood Photographer Edward S. Curtis

two indigenous kwakiutl men sit in traditional clothing on the floor of a lodge surrounded by objects, including a small white faced analog clock on the floor between them. a 1911 photo by edward curtis
Little Plume (R) and his son Yellow Kidney (L), in their lodge with an analog clock, 1911. Curtis removed the clock from published versions of the photo. via wikimedia

The general contours of Edward S. Curtis’s decades-long struggle to produce his 20-volume photographic epic, The North American Indian, are not the issue, though much of the details hit differently now than they did when I was a dewy-eyed child. This 2012 Smithsonian article does a fine job of laying out the top-line WTFs, like destroying his glass negatives to keep his wife from getting them in the divorce. And selling his $75,000 Kwakiutl restaged documentary to the American Museum of Natural History for $1,000 during WWI.

But what I was not prepared for Curtis’s Hollywood era.

In 1920, a broke 52-yo Curtis moved to Los Angeles, where he shot celebrity portraits, and took promotional film stills for his friend Cecil B. de Mille. Here is a hand-colored portrait of Anna May Wong, which sold at Christie’s in 2002.

a studio portrait of a tall, thin, asian woman with a short dark bob, one hand behind her, the other raised to her chin. she wears a tight gown that is arranged on the floor around her in a large, fringed circle. the photo is black and white, but the dress has been hand painted red. the woman is anna may wong, a famous 1920s actress, and the photographer was edward curtis
Edward S. Curtis, Anna May Wong, 1920s, hand-colored gelatin silver print, 16 3/8 x 12 1/4 in., via Christie’s [s/o Nothings Monstered on bsky]

Here is one of seventeen film stills from de Mille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) in the collection of the California Historical Society.

a blue toned photo of four men on the set of the ten commandments in 1923. two are in modern clothing, the director and cinematographer, i think, and pharaoh is seated, with ridiculous curled elf slippers, while moses is wigged out like gandalf on the right. the photo was taken by edward s curtis.
I don’t know who that Barry Diller-looking guy is blocking him, but Charles DeRoche, who played Rameses, clearly did not have final edit on this photo. Also DeMille and Theodore Roberts as Moses. photo: Edward S. Curtis, via CHS

This is the only one that has the filmmaker in it; the rest are all posed or captured moments of the world of the film. But this one, too, of course, feels staged.

Curtis may have dismissed his commercial and commissioned work, but it still embodies his process, techniques, and aesthetic choices. Curtis has been criticized for his staging and manipulation of his North American Indian images, for the romanticization and exoticizing of his subjects, and for ignoring the active oppression and cultural violence Indigenous people were experiencing throughout his project.

The Hollywood work feels like a perfect lens for recognizing what’s going on in photographs, Curtis’s or otherwise.

If I had a nickel for every time an early 20th century photographer deleted a small alarm clock in order to make their pre-modern point, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s strange that it’s happened twice. [greg.org]