September Fine Art & Design
Tue, Sep 23, 2025 03:00PM EDT
Lot 285
Edward Curtis "The Lookout" Photogravure
Estimate: $400 - $600
Starting Bid
Bid Increments
| Price | Bid Increment |
|---|---|
| $0 | $5 |
| $50 | $10 |
| $250 | $25 |
| $1,000 | $50 |
| $2,000 | $100 |
| $4,000 | $250 |
| $10,000 | $500 |
| $20,000 | $1,000 |
| $50,000 | $2,500 |
| $100,000 | $5,000 |
| $500,000 | $10,000 |
Titled on the lower left corner and "From Copyright Photograph 1905 by E.L. Curtis" on the lower right.
Frame: 15 1/2" x 19 1/2"
Image: 8 1/2" x 7"
Condition: There are a few very light scratches to the frame. There is a slight undulation to the image.
About:
Edward S. Curtis (1868–1952) was an American photographer and ethnographer best known for his extensive documentation of Native American peoples in the early 20th century. Born in Wisconsin and later based in Seattle, Curtis began his career as a portrait photographer before dedicating himself to recording the lives, traditions, and material culture of Indigenous tribes across North America.
His most ambitious project, The North American Indian, was a 20-volume publication produced between 1907 and 1930, supported in part by financier J.P. Morgan. This monumental work combined text, photographs, and photogravures, aiming to preserve what Curtis viewed as vanishing cultures. Over the course of more than two decades, he created over 40,000 images and thousands of pages of ethnographic notes, traveling from the Southwest to the Arctic.
Curtis worked primarily with large-format cameras and used techniques such as orotone and photogravure printing to achieve high visual fidelity. Though later criticized for staging and romanticizing aspects of his subjects, Curtis’s work remains a key archive in both photographic history and Native American studies. His legacy lies in the scale and ambition of his ethnographic vision and his role in shaping early 20th-century perceptions of Indigenous America.
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