Shadow Catcher - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1417774886 ISBN 13: 9781417774883

Publisher: The Book League of America [c.1940], 1940

Synopsis

Many Native Americans photographed by Edward S. Curtis (1868–1952) called him Shadow Catcher. But the images he captured were far more powerful than mere shadows. When the twentieth century was just getting underway, Curtis began documenting North American Indian culture in words and photographs. Today, almost one hundred years later, his work still stands as the most extensive and informative collection of its kind. His photographs are more than mere documents; they are works of art revealing subtleties of human expression missing from other historical and anthropological records. Filled with Curtis’s breathtaking photographs and available for the first time in a paperback edition, Shadow Catcher traces Curtis’s life and work from his boyhood in Wisconsin, through his first photo expedition to Alaska in 1897 and the completion of The North American Indian collection in 1930, to his death in 1952.

About this title

About the Author

Laurie Lawlor has published more than thirty-four books for children, young adults, and adults, including Helen Keller: Rebellious Spirit, an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book, and a memoir based on natural history, This Tender Place: Story of a Wetland Year.

From Publishers Weekly

Lawlor (Addie Across the Prairie) engagingly chronicles the life and work of photographer-ethnologist Edward S. Curtis (1868- 1952), perhaps best known for his 20-volume The North American Indian, a collection of photographs and written histories of the tribes he spent more than 30 years studying. According to Lawlor, Curtis sacrificed much for his determination to record a culture he believed to be on the brink of extinction. The lively text focuses on his struggles, from his beginnings as a studio photographer in 1890s Seattle to his neverending quest for financial support from the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan, to his patience in winning the trust of the people he sought to memorialize. Although openly admiring, Lawlor does not shy away from more problematic aspects of Curtis's career-she acknowledges that he staged events for the camera and posed his subjects, and that his obsession with his mission impoverished and eventually unraveled his family. The exquisitely designed book (printed in sepia on cream paper) contains scores of Curtis's haunting photographs, as well as portraits of Curtis and his family. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Book League of America [c.1940]
• Publication date: 1940
• ISBN 10: 1417774886
• ISBN 13: 9781417774883
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English