Description
Book SynopsisEdward Curtis saw his job as that of creating a photographic record of the vanishing race of the North American Indian. His work therefore became as much a projection of colonial attitudes upon aboriginal peoples as it was an authentic record of their lives.
The Edward Curtis Project began when the Presentation House Theatre commissioned Marie Clements to write a play that would stage the issues raised by Curtis' monumental but controversial achievementto dramatize not only the creation of his twenty-volume photographic and ethnographic epic and the enormous commitment, unwavering vision, sacrifice, poverty and ultimate disappointment it represented for the photographer, but also the devastating legacy that his often misrepresentative and imposed vision had on the lives of the people he touched.
Upon receiving the commission, Marie Clements immediately asked photojournalist Rita Leistner to create a parallel photographic investigation of Curtis' workto question
