Lummi Type
1899
Medium
Photogravure, plate 320 from "The North American Indian, Volume 9" (1913)
Dimensions
Image/paper: 37.4 × 26.3 cm (14 3/4 × 10 3/8 in.); Mount: 56.2 × 46.2 cm (22 3/16 × 18 1/4 in.)
Classification
photogravure
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
49956
Art Historical Context
Edward S. Curtis's *Lummi Type* (1899), a striking photogravure from plate 320 of *The American Indian, Volume 9* ( 1913), captures dignified presence of a Lummi man from the Coast Salish people of the Pacific Northwest. Photographed during Curtis's early fieldwork in Washington state, this image exemplifies his lifelong quest to document Native American cultures he feared were disappearing due to assimilation and modernization. Part of his monumental 20-volume project, supported by patrons like J.P. Morgan, the series combined over 2,000 photographs with ethnographic text. The photogravure t...
About the Artist
Edward S. Curtis · 1868–1952
Edward S. Curtis (1868–1952) was an American photographer and ethnographer whose monumental project "The North American Indian" — a forty-volume illustrated work documenting over eighty Native American tribes — is one of the most ambitious photographic enterprises ever undertaken. Born near Whitewater, Wisconsin, he grew up in Minnesota and established a portrait studio in Seattle, Washington, in ...