For more on the book, click here. To listen to a podcast of the interview with the author, click here:
Photographer Edward Curtis started off his career at the tail end of the 19th century, making portraits of Seattle’s wealthiest citizens. But a preoccupation with Native Americans and a chance encounter on a mountaintop triggered an idea: Curtis decided to chronicle the experience of the vanishing tribes — all of them. It was an unbelievably ambitious project that would define Curtis, his work and his legacy.
Writer Tim Egan has just completed a new biography of Curtis. It’s called Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: the Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. He tells NPR’s Rachel Martin that Curtis discovered his first subject almost by accident. “He stumbles upon this, I call her ‘the last Indian of Seattle’; it was Princess Angeline; she was the daughter of Chief Seattle, after whom the city was named.”
Organikos 