Getting Water - Apache

Frontier photographer Edward S. Curtis grew up in Minnesota and Washington State. He developed an interest in photography in his teens, and commenced a successful career as a portraitist in Seattle before beginning his twenty-volume photographic series, The North American Indian. Endorsed by J.P Morgan and President Theodore Roosevelt, the project was an ambitious attempt to document disappearing Native American traditions. For thirty years, he photographed tribes in the United States, British Columbia, and Alaska.

Though criticized in recent years for their romantic, and sometimes inaccurate, portrayal of Native American life, the images were very popular in the early-20th century. Curtis befriended many of his subjects, who agreed to pose for his often staged tableaux. A master of composition, Curtis draws attention here to the crouching woman through the raking diagonal of the water’s edge, contrasted dramatically with the diagonal of her arm. Additionally, the two trees above form a triangle pointing down at her. Through such formal means, Curtis directs viewers’ attention to specific artifacts identified with Native American life: the water jug, the horses loaded with baskets, and the blanket the woman is wearing. Perhaps more artful than accurate, Getting Water-Apache reveals Curtis’ paradoxical ambition to be both artist and anthropologist.