Jim Karpen Tips

June 2001

The Internet is becoming a treasure trove of historical documents, not the least of which is the vast collection of historical photos. We'll touch on a few of the collections here, including archives of the famous photos of Native Americans taken by Edward Curtis.

Curtis is somewhat of a controversial figure because while he purported to capture the waning culture of Native Americans in the early 20th century, it was later discovered that the photos were posed and that in some cases they may have reflected his vision of how Native Americans should appear rather than the way they really did.

Yet his images and volumes of ethnographic notes constitute a valuable resource. His stated objective was to depict "all features of Indian life and environment … the young and the old, with their habitations, industries, ceremonies, games, and everyday customs."

The collection is of Curtis photos, which were published in a series of 20 books over a period of decades in the early 20th century, has now been put online as part of the American Memory Project of the Library of Congress. It contains 2,226 illustrations.

You can search the collection by keyword or browse it by subject, tribe, or geographic location. Some 80 tribes are included. You can click on a tribe name to see a list of all the photos related to that tribe. For each item there is a thumbnail photo, summary, notes, relevant subjects, etc. If you click on the thumbnail picture, it will give you a larger version, plus the option to download an even higher resolution photo.

The American Memory web site has quite a number of other collections of photos. They include Daguerreotype photography from 1839-1864, Great Plains photographs from 1880-1920, panoramic photographs from 1851-1991, western U.S. photos from 1860-1920, and Civil War photos. You can do a keyword search that includes all collections, or you can restrict your search to specific collections.

Also available is an exhibition of photos from the National Archives entitled "Picturing the Century: One Hundred Years of Photography". It includes photos by famous photographers as well as by amateurs and is organized into these headings: A New Century, The Great War and the New Era, The Great Depression and the New Deal, A World in Flames (World War II), Postwar America, and Century's End. Some of the subjects include the Wright brothers, Ellis Island, Martin Luther King, Jr., and hippies. Well-known photographers represented include Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange.

© 2001 by Jim Karpen, Ph.D. (#269)