Curtis, Edward S.
2006 The Indian Picture Opera: A Vanishing Race. : Mosa Motion Graphics LLC.
Notes: DVD 50 minutes. Subtitles: English, French and SpanishReviewed 15 May 2008 by:
Raymond A. Bucko <bucko@creighton.edu>
Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, USAMedium: Film/Video Subject
Keywords:Photographers - United States
Indians of North America - History
Indians of North America - Social life and customs
Indians of North America - Pictorial works Curtis, Edward S., 1868-1952
Gilbert, Henry F. B. (Henry Franklin Belknap), 1868-1928
DVD-Video discs
ABSTRACT: This representation of the 1911-1912 traveling theater exhibition of E. S. Curtis’s photographs is accompanied by a narrative provided by Curtis himself and live music based on Indian motifs composed by Henry Gilbert. The "opera" was originally intended to publicize Curtis’s work and to raise subscriptions for his monumental series of books The North American Indian. Through romanticized and contrived images, the exhibition focused on the theme of "the vanishing Indian", a common view in America at that time, and presented Natives as living in an untouched idealized past while reminding the audience, briefly, of America’s injustices perpetrated against them.
This DVD provides a representation of the 1911 - 1912 traveling theater exhibition of E. S. Curtis’s photographs, accompanied by a narrative provided by Curtis himself and live music based on Indian motifs composed by Henry Gilbert. A conductor directed an orchestra with a baton and directed the projectionist with a switch wired to a light in the projection room to signal the change in pictures. Hand-colored images were originally projected to theater audiences with two magic lantern projectors; one image dissolved into another – no doubt high tech for the time.The work was originally intended to publicize Curtis’s photography and to raise subscriptions for his monumental photography collection The North American Indian, which was priced at a still-startling $3,000 for the set. The Opera played at such venues as the Hippodrome, Carnegie Hall and the National Geographic Society, but while it received good reviews, it was a financial disappointment and did not result in increased subscriptions to the costly series of books. The second season of the exhibition, 1912-1913, also proved a financial failure and the venture was canceled.
The Prologue of this DVD provides an insightful introduction to the production of the Indian Picture Opera and to Edward Curtis’s life and work. Switching between English and Yupic, a Native language spoken in Alaska, the Native narrator's own voice reminds the DVD audience of the ongoing vitality of Native life and culture. The narrator relates the historical background of the Opera but also states the Native purpose for the DVD: to demonstrate that Native peoples are normal human beings and that grave injustices have been committed against them. The speaker ironically characterizes himself as part of a vanishing race, while demonstrating the continuity and ongoing vitality of Native life, despite great losses and deprivation. The narrator goes on to describe how John Pierpont Morgan and then his son financed the Curtis opera, another irony, in that it was Morgan’s railroads that caused much of the disruption in the lifeways that Curtis was then trying to preserve through photographs and text.
The actual picture opera reproduces Curtis's introductory narrative to the accompanying images and music entitled "Our Evening with the Indians". In this segment Curtis gives a general introduction to the picture opera itself, and notes the wide variations in Native life, particularly religion, and provides background about the making of the picture show. The producers of this DVD supplement Curtis’ picture set with additional images, some in color, as well as a panoply of special effects worthy of an overzealous Power Point presentation.
Beyond the introduction and concluding remarks of the DVD and Curtis’s own introduction, the picture opera itself is divided into 14 chapters reproducing and sometimes approximating the actual show created by Curtis. Curtis had not yet finished his work so this presentation is restricted primarily to the Northern Plains, Southwest and California. The chapters are entitled: Dream of the Ancient Red Man; the Hunkalowanpi Ceremony; The Indians of the Palm Canyons; The Apache; The Hopi; Indians of the Northern Plains; The Coast Tribes of the Pacific; On the Jocko; The Kutenai; By the Arrow; Signal Fire to the Mountain God; The Navajo; Canyon de Chelly (Tisay) and finally,The Vanishing Race.
Curtis’s presentation is far more impressionistic than ethnographic. For instance, in the Hunkalowanpi chapter, Curtis presents a four-direction prayer used before an adoption ceremony (hunkalowanpi means a sung ritual to adopt someone), but he makes no mention of adoption. In Indians of the Northern Plains and On the Jocko, he does not name the Native groups being represented and merely describes them as being Northern Plains Indians.
To Curtis’s credit, he does emphasize in his work the vast cultural and linguistic and geographical differences of a broad variety of Native American groups. While he did indeed romanticize Natives and literally project their images into the past, he did not homogenize them into the archetypal Plains Indian that, in many ways, lingers today. Staged or not, Curtis’ images are beautiful and continue to exert an aesthetic and cultural influence on some non-Natives and Natives alike.
Gallons of ink have been spilled over Curtis’s manipulation of Native images, presenting them both as people of the past and as 'vanishing'. Nevertheless, his work remains relevant for it shows how Curtis himself and others of his time understood and literally projected Native life to a larger public.
And Curtis’s own life continues to fascinate. In addition to this reconstruction of the Picture Opera, his film "The Land of the Head Hunters" is currently being restored and commented upon in a joint effort by scholars from Rutgers University, the University of British Columbia, and indigenous scholars. The first screening of this restoration will take place in Los Angeles on June 5, 2008 at the Getty Center accompanied by a conference jointly sponsored by the Kwakwaka'wakw of Canada and the University of California at Los Angels.
I have only a few concerns about how the Indian Picture Opera is presented in this DVD. I initially assumed the production would be as faithful to the original presentation created by Curtis as possible. Indeed, Curtis attempted to be as high tech as possible for his time – dual projectors, hand-tinted color images in an era of sepia–toned photography, with music and dramatic staging to set the mood for the evening. The DVD version however, employs techniques unavailable to Curtis: panning single images, zooming in and out of images, turning images, animating portions of images such as fire or overlaying snow, adding animal and other nature sounds to the music and pictures, creating multiple versions of one image, cubing single images and spinning it around. I found some of this distracting: panning does not allow one to choose where to focus on a photograph but does it for you. The DVD Production Notes state that this was done to keep modern audiences interested. While I believe that Curtis’s photographs would have been self-sufficient, I also teach contemporary college students who would sometimes like me to cube myself and spin, so I appreciate the concern for audience attention!
Another concern lies in not using the medium entirely to its capacity. I’m not suggesting that more high tech image manipulation be employed! However, a DVD allows for all kinds of supporting documentation, textual and voice-over, as well as still pictures to be included with the main feature. Except for small hints in the menu and credits, there is little documentation around the recreating of Curtis’ original stage production for this DVD. Including a detailed essay on how the original production was retrieved and in some cases reconstructed would have greatly enhanced this DVD. The medium allows for a secondary voice-over commentary, a common feature on many contemporary movie DVDs, which would have been valuable for classroom use.
My last concern involves the ethics of portraying certain religious scenes. In the first decades of the 20th century, photographers were allowed to capture such images, but this is no longer true today. The DVD should have had information alerting the viewer to this reality, particularly concerning the Hopi rituals depicted in this production. Any instructor who uses this DVD for educational purposes should raise this issue about respect for religious propriety.
In all, this is an important representation of Curtis’s work and a welcome addition to the Curtis corpus. While those looking for an exact reproduction of the original stage production will be disappointed, the film does substantially reproduce Curtis’ effort to bring his work to a larger audience. Ironically, the same early 20th century high tech (photographs, projectors, coordinated music, stage scenery, light signals) used to make the production more appealing to a wider audience is amplified in this early 21st century production, now shown on wide screen televisions and computer monitors with even more technical enhancements.
This DVD would serve well to introduce college and high school students to the work of Edward Curtis, 19th and early 20th century understandings of Native life and culture, and critical historical and ethical issues of representation of Native peoples. I would recommend for classroom use to show only the actual "Opera" decontextualized from the opening and closing narrations. Unfortunately many students, although they might recognize some of the images, are fairly ignorant about Curtis and Indian photography in general, so the instructor could show the introduction and conclusion of the opera to further contextualize the history of the images and to introduce the film’s Native voice.
Hopefully this will be compelling enough to engage the students in further questioning and research this important topic.
There is a wealth of Edward Curtis material available on the web and in publications to enhance this contextualizing process. The fullest exposition of Curtis’ efforts to create The Indian Picture Opera can be found in Chapter 7 "The Vanishing Race in Sight and Sound" of Mike Gidley’s Edward S Curtis and the North American Indian, Incorporated. This chapter also contains some of the typescript narrative read by Curtis during the opera.
Another work useful to contextualize the DVD under review is Edward Sheriff Curtis: Visions of a Vanishing Race by Florence Curtis Graybill who was Curtis’s middle daughter and Victor Boesen, 1976, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press (reviewed in ARD -- http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=1478).
Christopher Lyman in The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions: Photographs of Indians by Edward S. Curtis provides an overall history of Native photography and an in depth analysis of how Curtis manipulated his photograph images to meet his preconceived notions. The two most prominent films about Curtis which will serve well to further contextualize his life and work are Coming to Light: Edward S. Curtis and the American Indian by Anne Makepeace (reviewed in the Anthropology Review Database by this author (http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=1521) and The Shadow Catcher: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian by T.C. McLuhan.
Rutgers University provides a comprehensive online Curtis bibliography of texts, resources, and film: http://www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9&Itemid=16.
The Library of Congress’ American Memory website provides a comprehensive index and reproductions of Curtis’ photographs as well as biographical information on Curtis: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ienhtml/curthome.html. The site also provides a useful learning guide to Curtis’ work: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/collections/curtis/.
Valerie Daniels created an online resource entitled "Selling the North American Indian: The Work of Edward Curtis" which documents a variety of ways in which Curtis promoted his work and made it more available to an audience wider than the affluent who could afford the subscription cost of his magnum opus: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA02/daniels/curtis/sitemap.html. Included in this site is material on the Picture Opera(http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA02/daniels/curtis/musicale.html) including transcripts of Curtis’ speeches during the Picture Opera, advertisements and reviews of the production, and information on the Indianist music movement. There is also a reproduction of the chapter "The Kutenai" executed in picture by picture dissolves with accompanying music which I would suggest better represents the feel of the original theatrical presentation (see http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA02/daniels/curtis/musicale/Kutenai.html -- although I would suspect that picture borders would have been cropped in the original production.)
You can view one of the episodes (Canyon de Chelly (Tisay) on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKJJnBsWbNs. In fact there are a considerable amount of Curtis work on YouTube. The same clip is on Native American Tube http://natube.magnify.net/item/4KH9TQC4ZKM3XV5M (which actually links to the YouTube clip). You can even obtain a podcast of two of the chapters from the DVD (http://www.curtisdvd.com/podcast/IPO.xml). Mosa Motion Graphics have a website describing their product (http://www.curtisdvd.com/).
In all, this DVD provides an accessible and engaging entrée to the work of Edward Curtis and the complex issues surrounding that work.
References Cited:
Gidley, Mike 1998 Edward S Curtis and the North American Indian, Incorporated Cambridge University Press.
Lyman, Christopher 1982 The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions: Photographs of Indians by Edward S. Curtis Pantheon Books.
Makepeace, Anne 2000 Coming to Light: Edward S. Curtis and the American Indian National Geographic Films.
McLuhan, T.C. 1974 The Shadow Catcher: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian. Mystic Fire Video.
To cite this review, the American Anthropological Association recommends the following style:
Bucko, Raymond A.
2008 Review of The Indian Picture Opera: A Vanishing Race. Anthropology Review Database. May 15. Electronic document, http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=3082, accessed February 10, 2010.© Anthropology Review Database
(available online: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/)