Photography
The Anthropological Vision in the 19th Century: Edward Curtis and Frank Rinehart
19th century anthropological photography
Two great names in anthropological photography documented Native American history: Frank Albert Rinehart (1861–1928) and Edward Curtis (1868–1952). Each in their own way, they created a large collection of images of exceptional quality that allow us today to better appreciate Native American history in North America.
Rinehart had the opportunity to photograph numerous Native American leaders in 1898 during a large American Indian convention held in Omaha. He then spent two years touring Native American tribes to complete his work. Rinehart's photographic collection is housed at Haskell Indian Nations University.
Curtis initiated a photography project of unparalleled scope to document Native Americans, which the Smithsonian Museum refers to as one of the greatest publishing undertakings of all time. A photographer and ethnologist in the late 19th century, his anthropological work focused on documenting the presence of Native American peoples in the American West. He left a unique photographic inventory that has long been contested, for which he lost the copyright.
Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868 -- 1952)
Edward Curtis, 1868 – 1952
Photographer and ethnologist
Circa 1907
Edward Sheriff Curtis's (born 1868 in Whitewater, Wisconsin) early life was marked by a rural, unstable, and modest life, but also by a self-taught curiosity and a budding love of nature and photography.
Born into a modest family, Edward was the second of four children. His father, Johnson Asahel Curtis, was a Civil War veteran turned itinerant minister, often ill and financially unstable. His mother, Ellen Curtis, kept the family afloat as best she could. The family moved frequently, following their father's religious missions, resulting in a nomadic and financially insecure childhood.
Around 1874, the family moved to rural Minnesota, near Le Sueur. Edward left school at a young age, probably around the 6th or 7th grade (limited education). He spent a lot of time outdoors, observing landscapes, animals, and people. This deep connection to nature would remain a constant in his work as a photographer. From his teenage years, he worked with his father and brothers at various odd jobs (carpentry, farming, fishing).
Around 1885-1887, at the age of 17 or 19, Edward developed a passion for photography, at a time when it was still an experimental and artisanal practice. He built his first camera with his own hands, using a simple lens and a box. In 1887, the family moved near Seattle, Washington. His father died shortly after, leaving the family in difficult circumstances. Edward became the family's main breadwinner. He found work as a studio photographer, then opened his own studio in Seattle with a partner, Rasmus Rothi (and later alone).
By the late 1890s, his work was recognized for its technical quality and distinct artistic style. He photographed spectacular landscapes of the American Northwest, as well as meticulous portraits, particularly of local Native Americans such as the Suquamish. In 1898, he photographed Prince Romanoff during his expedition to Alaska, launching his reputation.
Photos presented at the National Photographic Society exhibition, for which he won the exhibition's grand prize
In 1898, three images were selected for an exhibition by the National Photographic Society (including two photographs of Princess Angeline, known as Kikisoblu, the eldest daughter of Grand Chief Seatle, born in 1820). He won the grand prize at the exhibition and thus established his reputation throughout the country.
In 1898, Curtis met scientists during an expedition to Mount Rainier, experts in Native American culture. He was hired as the official photographer for the Harriman Expedition to Alaska in 1899.
In 1899, he participated in a scientific expedition to Mount Rainier with leading intellectuals such as George Bird Grinnell. There, he encountered the Blackfeet, which deeply moved him. He understood that indigenous cultures were disappearing, and decided to devote his life to documenting them. It was here that the titanic project of The North American Indian was born, which he would pursue for 30 years.
In 1906, JP Morgan offered $75,000 (equivalent to $2.5 million in 2025 dollars) to produce a series of images of Native Americans, to produce a collection of 20 volumes for a total of 1,500 photographs. The fund was paid over a period of 5 years and was to support only the fieldwork, excluding his salary.
With these funds, he hired a team, including anthropologist Frederic Webb Hodger, from the Smithsonian Museum.
In total, 222 series have been published. Curtis is the official photographer, but documents the vanishing lifestyle and writes the introductions to the books. He also produces 10,000 wax scrolls to record the languages and music of vanishing peoples. He has produced a total of 40,000 photographs from 80 different tribes.
He described tribal practices, their history, food, housing, clothing, ceremonies, games, and funeral practices. He wrote biographies of tribal leaders.
With the emergence of cinematographic techniques, he produced films depicting tribal life. This abundant material often remained unique.
This practice has led some historians and anthropologists to question the veracity of his work. The authenticity of Curtis's work has been heavily disputed. As a result, the entire body of work has been called into question and discredited.
Furthermore, Curtis is an unfortunate example of copyright mismanagement. With his endorsement deals, he lost the distribution rights to his work. Despite many years of accumulating abundant and original material, he was unable to secure an income to support himself. He died in total obscurity.
The scenes presented illustrate this tension between Curtis's artistic ambition and the expectations of rigorous anthropological work. His approach, while preserving valuable visual evidence, raises the question of interpretation and image construction in the representation of Indigenous peoples.
Edward Curtis, famous for his photographs of the indigenous peoples of North America in the early 20th century, has often been accused of embellishing reality to fit an idealized and romanticized vision of these cultures. His work, while admired for its artistic and documentary quality, has sparked debates about its authenticity and ethical approach.
Curtis sometimes staged his subjects, asking them to wear anachronistic traditional clothing or to remove modern elements like watches or firearms. This desire to capture a "pure" image of Native cultures, often portrayed as frozen in the past, resulted in stagings that did not conform to Native American reality.
Guerrier Nez Perce à cheval
Guerrier Nez Perce à cheval
Adolph Muhr's contribution to Curtis's work
Photo of Adolph Muhr, by Edward Curtis, taken in 1907
Born in Germany around 1870, Adolph Muhr moved to the United States at the end of the 19th century, where he developed a portrait art at the crossroads of pictorialism, symbolism, and an almost sculptural plastic rigor. A discreet but essential collaborator of F. Holland Day and Edward S. Curtis, Muhr helped shape an aesthetic in which the body becomes an icon, light, and silence. In the shadow of these great figures, his gaze forges a rare body of work, centered on the dignity and formal beauty of faces and bodies, whether ancient, androgynous, or indigenous.
He is best known for his work with F. Holland Day, an American photographer and major figure in Pictorialism. Some of Muhr's works, often confused with or attributed to Day, depict young men in poses reminiscent of mythological or religious figures, in a visually dramatic and highly stylized style.
His style is characterized by careful composition, sculptural lighting reminiscent of ancient statuary, and symbolist staging. It draws heavily on heroic poses and idealized bodies, often nude but never vulgar. Muhr uses photography to explore both spiritual and erotic dimensions of the male body. This approach, close to symbolism, gives his works an emotional and mystical depth.
Adolph Muhr collaborated with Edward S. Curtis, notably at the beginning of the monumental project The North American Indian, a vast undertaking aimed at documenting the indigenous cultures of North America at the turn of the 20th century.
He was Curtis's first assistant, playing a vital role in putting together the early volumes of the series. He was renowned for his photographic printing and retouching skills, and some historians suggest that he contributed to the aesthetic quality of the project's early images.
Muhr, as an expert printer, helped develop platinum photographs, a demanding technique that yielded exceptional tonal richness. His artistic and technical input is said to have influenced the pictorialist tone of some of Curtis's early images.
Although he was not the author of the most famous portraits, he is believed to have participated in the photographic sessions on location, supporting Curtis in preparing and staging the shots. Their collaboration was short-lived. It is not known for certain why it ended, but Muhr appears to have stepped away from the project in favor of his own work or other photographic commitments.
The Unexplained Death of Adolph Muhr
Several scholars now suggest that Muhr was involved in the early 1910s in defending the rights of certain Native American nations. As a former assistant to Curtis, he is believed to have kept negatives or prints that documented not only the cultural richness of these peoples, but also evidence that might have challenged federal dispossession policies. Muhr was expected to appear as a witness or provide his archives in a major lawsuit involving Native American land claims.
However, he died suddenly in 1913 at the age of 43, the day before the trial. Officially, the cause of his death is not clearly established. Some suggest suicide, others an accidental disappearance. But the context and the precise timing have fueled a darker hypothesis: Muhr was the victim of pressure or imposed silence. Adolph Muhr could have been called to testify or provide photographic evidence in support of the rights of certain Native American nations.
This premature death contributed to the relative oblivion of his name, despite the importance of his role alongside more famous photographers such as F. Holland Day and Edward Curtis. His artistic sensibility, very much marked by an aesthetic of the body and the sacred, perhaps also isolated him in a photographic milieu that was still very conservative at the time.
Adolph Muhr remains a fascinating and enigmatic figure in the history of photography.
The Battle of Little Big Horn (1876)
At 36, Colonel George A. Custer embodied a fascinating blend of audacity, all-consuming ambition, impulsiveness, and arrogance. A former Civil War hero, where he had distinguished himself through his reckless courage in the Union cavalry, Custer had built his reputation on swift exploits, spectacular charges, and a marked taste for personal glory. But by 1876, at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, his flaws were outweighing his strengths: Impatient and reckless, he refused to wait for reinforcements that were even close. Despising his adversaries, he seriously underestimated the number of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors gathered under Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and other chiefs. A divider rather than a unifier, he split his forces into several groups, thus weakening his own capacity for resistance.
Edward S. Curtis reenacted the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1906-1907 as part of his ambitious project "The North American Indian." This was not a strict historical reportage; it was a carefully orchestrated photographic staging.
Curtis recruited actual participants in the battle, primarily Lakota (Sioux), Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors who had fought against Custer's troops in 1876. Some of them were combat veterans, and he was able to benefit from firsthand accounts to lend authenticity to his reenactment.
Curtis did not photograph at the exact historic site of Little Big Horn, but he chose similar landscapes in the Great Plains to evoke the atmosphere of the place and time.
He directed his subjects like a film director, asking them to rehearse mounted charges, simulate battles, regroupings, attack or retreat strategies. The warriors were dressed in their traditional clothing (sometimes more ornate than in real life) to enhance the dramatic and visually striking aspect.
He employed heavy 6x8 or 8x10 inch cameras, capturing highly detailed images, and used carefully considered poses to convey a sense of dramatic momentum and movement frozen in time.
In short, Curtis reconstructed the Battle of the Little Big Horn as a heroic fresco, blending real-life accounts, theatrical staging, and pictorialist aesthetics. His goal was less to produce a rigorous historical document than to visually elevate Native American memory to the level of an epic legend.
Curtis's report presented to the government
In 1907, after organizing the reenactment of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Curtis submitted a report to the U.S. government, specifically to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was part of the Department of the Interior. This report accompanied his photographs and offered an account of the events as told by the ancient Native warriors themselves.
This was not simply a photographic document. Curtis wrote a veritable memoir in which he recounted the battle according to Native American accounts, including those of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors who fought against Custer. He thus offered a version of the battle from the perspective of the Native American victors, which was rare for the time.
Crow Scouts
Cette photographie capture un campement Apsaroke (Crow) le long de la rivière Little Bighorn, à proximité du site de la bataille historique. Bien que cette image ne soit pas une reconstitution directe de la bataille, elle offre un contexte visuel précieux sur l'environnement et les peuples impliqués.
Cette photographie montre un groupe de guerriers Atsina à cheval, avançant en file indienne sur une crête, brandissant des bâtons de coup ornés de plumes. Curtis a dirigé cette scène pour évoquer une expédition guerrière, recréant l'atmosphère des raids traditionnels. Bien que cette image ne représente pas directement la bataille de Little Big Horn, elle illustre le type de scènes que Curtis a mises en scène pour capturer l'esprit des conflits de l'époque.
Crow Scouts
Here is a selection of iconic images created by Edward S. Curtis as part of his Battle of the Little Big Horn reenactment project. While not explicitly identified as battle reenactments, these photographs depict mock war scenes and portraits of Native warriors, capturing the spirit of the era. These images, though staged, are valuable visual testaments to Curtis's efforts to document and preserve Native cultures. They offer insight into how he recreated historical scenes to capture the essence of the people he photographed.
It appears that the American authorities at the time, unwilling to promote a story glorifying a Native American victory against the American army, deemed the content politically sensitive and unacceptable for official distribution.
The report was either lost or filed away in government archives. For a long time, only a few references to it survived in private correspondence and side notes. It was never officially published or used in government historical documentation on the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Some fragments of the testimonies collected by Curtis, notably those of leaders such as Two Moons or White Bull, were subsequently rediscovered or cross-referenced by independent researchers.
Curtis offered an authentic Indigenous perspective at a time when official history was written solely from a Euro-American perspective. The suppression of his report demonstrates the extent to which the collective memory of Little Big Horn was "manipulated" into a national legend centered on the figure of Custer, transforming a military defeat into a heroic American myth. Indeed, several Hollywood films attest to this approach.
The company "The Indian Picture Opera"
Between 1911 and 1914, Edward S. Curtis presented an ambitious multimedia show called "The Indian Picture Opera," designed to promote his monumental work, The North American Indian, and to educate the American public about Native American cultures. These presentations were elaborate events that combined projected photographs, live music, dramatic narration, and, sometimes, authentic costumes or ritual objects.
Photographs projected by magic lantern
Curtis used a magic lantern (a precursor to the modern projector) to project glass slides of his most memorable photographs onto a large screen. The images were carefully chosen for their visual impact: full-length portraits, ceremonial scenes, grandiose landscapes, traditional dwellings, and more.
Dramatic narration and “poetic” texts
A narrator (often Curtis himself) accompanied the screening with a deep, theatrical voice, reading texts composed by Curtis. These texts were often lyrical, sometimes sentimental, and described Indigenous peoples as noble and tragic figures, "disappearing" under the pressure of modernity. He emphasized their beauty, dignity, and the richness of their traditions, often in a melancholic tone.
Live orchestral music
The whole thing was accompanied by an orchestra or chamber ensemble, which played music composed specifically for the occasion. Curtis had collaborated with Henry F. Gilbert, an American composer influenced by folk and indigenous music. The music aimed to create an emotional, almost cinematic atmosphere ahead of its time, synchronized with the images and the narrative.
Ethnographic material and staging
In some performances, Curtis displayed or used authentic objects: traditional clothing, drums, weapons, ceremonial artifacts, etc. The desired effect was to immerse the audience in a total sensory immersion, halfway between documentary and romantic theater.
Impact and reception
The show toured several major American cities.
It was well received by the white public of the time, moved by this "evocation of a lost world".
However, in hindsight, some critics view the show as a romanticized, depoliticized staging of real-life cultural genocide—a form of spectacle that "aestheticized" the disappearance of Indigenous peoples while obscuring political accountability.
Edward Curtis's shows, especially The Indian Picture Opera, were not a profitable enterprise in the strict financial sense, although they had some cultural resonance.
Here are the main elements to consider:
Modest revenue despite a good reception
The Indian Picture Opera has been well received by audiences, especially in major cities like New York, Chicago, and Washington.
The show attracted curious people, enthusiasts of exotic cultures, and intellectual and artistic circles.
However, ticket revenues were not enough to cover the high costs associated with production: transport of equipment, musicians' fees, printing of slides, rental of halls, etc.
A very expensive undertaking
Curtis funded this project with the help of patrons (notably JP Morgan, who had pledged $75,000 over 5 years to support The North American Indian).
But Curtis often spent more than he received, particularly on his travels, photographic expeditions, and stage performances.
In the long run, the project became a personal financial burden. Curtis fell into debt, and his family suffered from his absences and obsession with the project.
No lasting success
After a few years, public interest waned.
The social and political context was changing: the United States was entering World War I, and national concerns were shifting away from Indigenous peoples.
The show disappeared without leaving a profit, and even The North American Indian (the printed work) was not a commercial success: very few copies were sold.
Direct consequence: ruin
By the 1930s, Curtis was broke, exhausted, and almost forgotten.
He sold his photographic plates and rights for a pittance.
It was only after his death at the end of the 20th century that his work was rediscovered and celebrated.
In short, the Indian Picture Opera was an artistic masterpiece, but an economic failure. It helped forge the romantic legend of Native peoples in white American culture, but without generating sustainable income for either Curtis or his patrons.
Political positioning
Edward S. Curtis did not directly express very clear political or activist opinions in the traditional sense. However, several aspects of his work can be interpreted as carrying implicit, even political, messages, even though he himself did not present himself as an activist.
Here's how to understand his political position:
A "civilizing" mission in the spirit of the times
Curtis was influenced by the ideologies of his time, notably the belief that Indigenous cultures were disappearing. His monumental project, The North American Indian, aimed to preserve the ways of life of these peoples through photography and writing before they disappeared. This attitude was an idea tinged with cultural colonialism, but seen as noble at the time. It was not a political project of vindication, but it was based on a paternalistic vision.
Financing by JP Morgan
Curtis's project was partly funded by the banker JP Morgan, which indirectly linked him to capitalist and conservative circles. This likely deterred him from taking an openly critical stance toward the government or forced assimilation policies.
Silence on injustices
Curtis did not publicly denounce U.S. federal policies such as residential schools for Native Americans, forced relocations, or land grabs. In this respect, he could be said to have adopted an apolitical, even complacent, stance toward the established order.
An idealized aesthetic rather than an objective ethnographic gaze
Curtis sometimes staged his subjects, asking them to wear traditional clothing or pose in timeless settings, deliberately erasing contemporary influences (such as Western clothing or modern objects). This approach, while aesthetic, can be seen as an ideological act: he froze Indigenous peoples in an idealized past, thereby depoliticizing them.
A romantic vision
Edward Curtis did not explicitly express political views in his known writings or interviews. However, his work carries within it a certain nostalgic, colonial, and sometimes romantic vision of the world. This vision reflects the cultural and political tensions of his time, without confronting them head-on. His silence on certain injustices, combined with a dramatization of tradition, had political effects, possibly without his being aware of it.
Curtis's last decades of life
Edward Curtis has three periods of his life: Young, in Seattle in 1887, the second around 1907, the last, mid 1940
Edward S. Curtis's life after 1920 took a dramatic turn, marked by disillusionment, financial difficulties, and a certain erasure from the cultural landscape, despite the monumentality of his work.
This was the end of his titanic project. Curtis continued to publish the final volumes of The North American Indian until 1930 (20 volumes + 20 portfolios), but with enormous difficulty. JP Morgan's support had ended in 1915, upon his death, and the war, then the Great Depression, made his work even harder to sell. He spent a personal fortune on the project, which he never recovered.
His family life deteriorated: Curtis became obsessed with his project, often absent, and eventually divorced in 1919. His ex-wife obtained part of his rights to his photographs as compensation, which deprived him of additional income at a critical time.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Curtis became increasingly isolated. His work was considered dated, even outdated: modernism was taking over art, and his romantic style was no longer popular. He moved to Los Angeles, where he worked behind the scenes at bread-and-butter jobs, including as a camera technician for Cecil B. DeMille on Hollywood films.
In 1935, the Morgan estate sold the rights to all of Curtis's unpublished material for a total of $1,000 plus royalties to a rare book collector. This sale included 19 collections of images, thousands of paper prints, the original copper plates and negatives. The majority of the material remained untouched and was rediscovered in 1972 in the basement of a Boston home.
Curtis died in 1952, at the age of 84, at his daughter's home in Whittier, California, largely unrecognized and uncelebrated. At his death, few remembered the magnitude of his monumental body of work.
In the 1970s, historians, artists, and advocates for Indigenous peoples rediscovered his work. His photographs were exhibited in the most prestigious museums, and his original volumes became extremely valuable (today, a complete set is worth several hundred thousand dollars).
He is now recognized as one of the most important documentary photographers in American history, despite the controversies surrounding his staging and romantic vision.
Curtis ended his life in obscurity, without recognition or money, but his work has survived his time and today enjoys considerable posthumous influence.
Other notable photographers
Frank Albert Rinehart (1861 — 1928)
Frank Albert Rinehart (German, born in Illinois, 1861 – 1928) was an American artist famous for his photographs of tribal chiefs and Native American scenes. Rinehart developed his photographic skills with photographer Charles Bohm in Denver. In 1881, he formed a partnership with the renowned photographer William Henry Jackson, world-renowned for his images of the American West. In 1885, they moved to Ohio, Nebraska, where he started his own photographic studio.
He was commissioned to take portraits of Native Americans attending the 1898 Indian Congress in Omaha. It was the largest gathering of Native American tribes at the time, bringing together over 500 members from 35 different tribes. Apache leader Geronimo, who was still a prisoner of war at the time, was among the attendees. With his assistant Adolph Muhr, they produced what is now considered one of the best photographic documentations of Indian leaders at the turn of the century.
Rinehart did what his contemporaries never considered useful: he offered these chiefs and tribal members a chance to display their dignity and individuality. The dramatic beauty of his portraits is particularly impressive. Rather than being cold ethnographic records, Rinehart's photographs are portraits of individuals, emphasizing the expressive power of his subjects.
Photographed in the studio, Rinehart captured his subjects with a camera using 8 x 10 glass negatives and a German lens. The nuanced tonal range and high quality of his prints suggest the use of the platinum printing process, which at the time offered the best type of photographic print of all chemical development methods.
Most photographs of Native Americans in the 19th century were outdoor snapshots, taken for the purpose of classifying and recording members of different tribes. It is widely believed that the work of Rinehart and his assistant Adolph Muhr had a significant impact on how Native Americans were portrayed in the decades that followed, even as their lands and rights were violated. Each photograph is accompanied by the subject's name, reinforcing their place in the collective memory of the American consciousness.
After the American Indian Congress, Rinehart and Muhr traveled to American Indian reservations for two years, meeting with American leaders who had not been present, while illustrating the daily life and culture of Native Americans in the western United States.
Rinehart's dramatic portraits remind us of the cruel and unjust treatment of Native American populations in the United States.
The Rinehart Collection of Native American Photographs is housed at Haskell Indian Nations University. Since 1994, the collection has been organized, preserved, copied, and cataloged in a computer database, funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Hallmark Foundation. It includes images from the 1898 Exposition, the Great American Exhibition of 1899, studio portraits from 1900, and photographs of Rinehart taken at the Crow Agency in Montana, also in 1900.
Visual references
The Photography of Frank A. Rinehart Huckberry
In a time of oppression, photographer Frank Albert Rinehart captured the dignity and individuality of Native American tribes.
Boston Public Library Collection on Flickr
Flickr album of 119 photos, with historical documentation, under CC (Common Creative) license
Collection of 98 photos, with documentation, under CC license
Platinum printing
Platinum prints, also called platinotypes, are photographic prints made using a monochrome printing process using platinum. Platinotype tones range from warm black to reddish brown, including extended halftone grays not possible with silver prints.
Unlike the silver oxide printing process, the platinum sits on the surface of the paper, while the silver oxide sits in a gelatin or albumen emulsion that coats the paper. Consequently, without the use of a gelatin emulsion, the final platinotype image is completely matte with a deposit of platinum (and/or palladium, its sister element that is also used in most platinum prints) slightly absorbed into the paper.
Platinotype prints are more durable than other photographic processes. Platinum group metals are chemically very stable.
Some of the beneficial features of a platinotype proof include:
The reflective quality of the print is more diffuse in nature than glossy prints which typically exhibit specular reflections;
A very nuanced and expanded range of tones;
The absence of a gelatin coating prevents the tendency for shots to warp;
The darker tones of the prints are more detailed and clear than silver-based prints (more detail in the dark areas).
Orlando Scott Goff (1843 – 1907)
He learned the photography trade in his native Connecticut. In 1868, he moved to Wisconsin. He took on his future business partner, David Francis Barry, as an apprentice. In 1871, he moved to Dakota where he established a photographic studio and gallery. In 1875, he accepted a position as photographer at Fort Abraham Lincoln, while Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and several units of the 7th Cavalry Regiment were stationed there.
Goff took the last photographs of Custer and his officers and men before their engagement at the Battle of the Little Bighorn against the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho allies of Sitting Bull. Goff returned to Bismarck to tend to his studio. In 1881, he took Sitting Bull's photograph of the Hunkpapa band of the Lakota people. He often traveled on trips outside his studio, capturing images of Native Americans across the Plains.
David Francis Barry (1854 – 1934)
Between 1878 and 1883, using a portable photographic studio, Barry traveled across the Great Plains, including the Dakotas and Montana, taking photographs as he went. Barry made a name for himself photographing Lakota figures such as Sitting Bull, Rain-in-the-Face, John Grass, and others. The Lakotas nicknamed him "Little Shadow Catcher." Barry returned to Wisconsin in 1890, where he ran a successful gallery in the town of Superior until his death in 1934.
Visual references
MOPA (Museum of Photographic Arts) Flickr collection , 123 images
McCord Museum Flickr Collection , a project of magnitude, 30 images
Smithsonian Museum Flickr Collection , 22 images
Type of equipment used in the late 19th century
An 8 x 10 camera, using sensitive glass plates to capture the image. This is the type of equipment that Rinehart and Curtis used in the studio and on location, which allowed for precise, high-resolution images.
References
Smithsonian Museum Edward Curtis's Epic Project to Photograph Native Americans
Northwestern University Curtis Project
PBS The Shadow Catcher
Portland Museum: The Legacy of Edward Curtis