Edwards says that to evaluate photographs, we need to ask how they were made, what practices were involved, and what claims were made by them and of them (Edwards, 2001, p. 158). The process of re-enactment in the late 1800s and early 1900s came out of the natural sciences, in which the concept of the experiment was dominant. Scientists were re-enacting natural processes or reactions in a closed environment, and then documenting them so that the results could be salvaged (Edwards, 2001, p. 162). Because many anthropologists had come from other scientific disciplines, for example, Malinowski and Boas, they found it quite logical to apply these methods to the new science of anthropology.

"Salvage ethnography" implies the recording of what is still extant, before its disappearance. However, oftentimes, what the ethnographers desired to record no longer existed, but the moral urgency of the times demanded that they record the practices before the knowledge was lost (Edwards, 2001, pp. 168-169). In Edward Curtis's photographs of Native people, he was using a widely accepted technique. When interviewed for the Seattle Times, he recounted in detail how he acquired photos of the Navajo Yebichai Dance (Image 2). He described how he convinced a small group to re-enact the dance for him, despite the protests of many other Navajo,


Image 2. Navaho Yebichai Dance, 1906

and that he had made the costumes himself (Lyman, 1982, pp. 65, 67). In his salvage ethnography work, he recorded those things that were already present, in real time as it were, but he was also trying to photograph the way things were before the arrival of the white colonists.

However, as noted before, for the vast majority of Curtis's photographs published for the general public during and after the 1960s, there was little accompanying text. The removal of the text from the photographs removes the acknowledgment of Curtis's intentions when he took the photographs: as salvage ethnographic work combined with aesthetic appeal (Lyman, 1982, p. 19). Hence, I believe it is the republishing of the work, in addition to Curtis's initial methods, that caused problems.

To apply the above discussion of re-enactment photographs to Edward Curtis's work, we must return to the questions Edwards says should be asked when looking at such photographs. We need to know how the photographs were made. It is clear that Curtis often asked others to pose for him, sometimes paying them, in order to record the desired circumstance (Lyman, 1982, p. 101). We know that Curtis used native actors in his work, and that they had input into the final product, and that he used props and camera tricks (Lyman, 1982, pp. 67-68).

We also need to know about the claims being made by and of the photographs. Ethnographers claimed they were accurate recordings of Native American ways of life, occasionally acknowledging in the accompanying texts that the photographs portrayed these people as they used to be, not as they were in the present (Hausman and Kapoun, 1995). During the early 1900s, scholars believed that

"Indians" were only "Indians" when they acted "Indian:" once they changed and acculturated, they were no longer "Indian" (Lyman, 1982, p. 50). This issue of the claims being made by the pictures needs to be evaluated during the 1960s, that is, when these photographs became generally popular, which makes answering it much more complex. For the later, mass-published works containing Curtis's photographs, each compiler had his or her own agenda in presenting Curtis's photographs and, thus, the pictures make different claims. This is the nature of photographs: their rawness makes any one interpretation subject to the agenda represented by the presentation of the context.

Post-Modernist Critique
Roger Keesing's Post-Modernist View

Roger Keesing argued that anthropology first treats the people it studies as "radically alter" or "exotic;" second, that anthropology has always been ahistorical; and third, that anthropologists treat cultures as isolated units (Lewis, 1998). It is instructive to apply Keesing's critique

Image 3. Fiesta of San Estevan, 1904


Image 4. Assiniboin Camp on Bow River, 1926

of ethnography to Curtis's photographs to illustrate the problems post-modernists see in works similar to Curtis's.

First, Curtis did portray his subjects as "radically alter," which is demonstrated by the fact that many of his photographs emit the aura of the noble savage. Often when he took his photographs, Curtis requested that the subjects dress in traditional garb, which sometimes were props that Curtis carried with him, rather than the "western" clothing, which was the style many Native peoples wore at the time (Lyman, 1982). He was very particular about the presence of "western" influence in his photographs during much of his photographic career. In his photograph, Fiesta of San Estevan, 1904 (Image 3), Curtis retouched parasols out of the photograph taken at Acoma Pueblo (Lyman, 1982, pp. 71-72). While some Native Americans still used traditional style lodging, close inspection of the photograph Assiniboin Camp on Bow River, 1926 (Image 4) reveals that these "teepees" were made from machine-woven fabric, possibly feed sacks, and product labels were retouched out of the photograph (Lyman, 1982, p. 72). By removing these elements of "western" culture from the photographs, Curtis portrays them as "exotic," and without influence from outside cultures.