August Not Fiction Book Discussions

With Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan, we will consider how complicated it can be to determine "[w]hat causes what to flourish or die or take another course" (Cheryl Strayed).

Society photographer Edward Curtis, the Annie Leibovitz of his day, left the comfort and stability of his portrait studio business to pursue his "Great Idea": to preserve in photographs, sound recordings, and extensive field notes the cultures of over 80 Native American tribes. He spent three decades at the beginning of the 20th century crisscrossing the country, patiently learning the ways of the many people he met and waiting to be invited into their lives. He took over 40,000 photographs and preserved over 10,000 audio recordings, and created the first narrative documentary film in the process. He not only did not earn an income from this project, he sacrificed his own financial security, his marriage, and his health for his project. His stated goal? "I want to make them live forever." Curtis' photographs, audio recordings, film, and extensive field notes, although they cost him everything, preserved in living memory the traditions and languages of tribes that today often use his work to recover and restore their history. Egan suggests that he helped to eventually broaden and improve Americans' attitudes toward Native Americans as well.

However, some critics argue that Curtis' "photographs were of a piece with early 20th century assimilation campaigns and official termination of Indian tribes" (Jon Christensen at sfgate.com) and that "Curtis' pictures actually supported the idea that Indians must inevitably melt away in the heat of modernity" (Josh Garrett-Davis at nytimes.com). And some contemporary photojournalists feel that work by Curtis and other photographers of his day, such as Civil War photographer Matthew Brady, provides an inauthentic record because it altered the reality of the time. Curtis did not always photograph Native American life as it was being lived under the pressures of government suppression, but rather Native American life he felt was disappearing, often asking tribes to reenact ceremonies they were forbidden to perform and wear clothes they were forbidden to wear, just as Brady arranged his scenes of battlefield death and destruction. In addition to the criticism of Curtis' work, some critics also fault Egan's portrayal of Curtis the man, insisting that " . . . Egan seems to want to put Curtis and his opus, The North American Indian, close to the center of the story of the great American Indian revivals of the last century. This takes Curtis out of his own historical context--enmeshed in a story of Indian decline--and plants him in a completely different historical context. In the process it also robs the great story of the revival of Indian people, tribes and cultures of its own powerful center--their own agency" (Jon Christensen at sfgate.com). All of these arguments, Curtis', Egan's, and their critics', revolve around the concept of presentism, using present-day concepts and values to interpret, portray, and judge the past.

What do you think? Who is most guilty of presentism is this debate: Curtis and Egan or the critics?Whose opinion do you think carries the most weight: Curtis', Egan's, the critics, the American Indian tribes of Curtis's day and of today, or you, the reader?

We hope you'll join the discussion: Tuesday, August 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, August 15 at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.