Bow River--Blackfoot

Edward Curtis opened a photographic studio in the early 1890s at a time when Native Americans had lost most of their native lands. Curtis cast himself as an ethnographer yet, in reality, he was posing his subjects, often providing historical costumes and dressing them up to look like authentic warriors and chiefs. Seemingly motivated to capture the image of a Vanishing America, he created images of men whose people, by this time, had been brutally massacred, betrayed by governmental treaties, and relocated to inferior and isolated reservations. These aesthetic simulations provided generations with a romanticized image of Native Americans. They continue to be sold to audiences today whose perception of 'Indianness' is often based on the stereotypes that Curtis helped to create.