It has been written that Franz Boas -the father of modern anthropology- was critical of Edward Curtis' photographic and ethnographic project for being weak on methodological rigor. Among Boas' vast bibliography and unpublished archives, is there any record of his views on Curtis?
Attaching link to Franz Boas archives at The American Philosophical Society.
http://www.amphilsoc.org/collections/view?docId=ead/Mss.B.B61-ead.xml
Dear Prof. Strauss!
I just know the basic articles by Boas and especially Kroeber's "history and science in anthropology". As far as I know, there was no direct reference on Curtis in this fundamental papers. The key issue may be the methodological rigor. There has been an exhibition on Curtis in the ethnographic museum in Vienna which focussed upon his photographs, however no dispute with Boas was mentioned whatsoever.
There is something approaching an answer to your question in a footnote to a book about Curtis by Mick Gidley. He has this to say:
"[...] In several places it has been reported that Curtis claimed that in 1907 Roosevelt received a complaint from Boas about Curtis's lack of training and the inadequacy of the project's fieldwork. In response, Roosevelt set up a commission consisting of Henry Fairfield Osborn, Charles D. Wolcott, and William H. Holmes to investigate. After examining the evidence, including a trunk of reference books and the field notebooks kept by Myers, the tribunal, to Roosevelt's obvious delight, exonerated Curtis (see, for example, Graybill and Boesen, 28-30 and Goetzmann, The First Americans, 22). However, after exhaustive searches, there is no record of any correspondence relating to such an issue, in 1907 or any other time, in the surviving papers of any of the alleged participants, Roosevelt, Boas, Osborn, Wolcott, or Holmes. For two particular complaints about Boas, see Curtis to Hodge, December 27, 1909, and Curtis to Meany, April 12, 1911. For an elaboration of the allegations, see Gidley, 'Footnotes to an anthropological Quarrel' (forthcoming)."
Mick Gidley, Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian, Incorporated, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 304-305, n. 37.
Thank you David Charles Wright-Carr for tracking down these sources! I am going to check on all these. I have never heard of anything in academic history so dramatic as this tribunal. The father of modern anthropology calls upon a sitting U.S. president to investigate the academic rigour of an independent investigator, Mr. Curtis. The subsequent tribunal then fully exonerates him. What an incredible story. I have put in requests to the archives of Boas and Roosevelt, and hope to track down correspondences that could shed some light.
Curtis' historical re-creation of "pre-contact" Native American culture was criticized from the outset for its inauthenticity. Upon the publication of the first volume (1907), Columbia University anthropologist Franz Boas complained of Curtis' lack of objectivity to president Roosevelt, who had contributed an introduction to the volume. Curtis' style of ethnography and photography differed dramatically from Boas's, who, like Curtis worked among the Northwest Coast Indian tribes. Unlike Curtis, Boas's ethnographic photographs and motion pictures were often made against a backdrop that screened out the physical context of his subjects. By breaking the relationship between the individual and the landscape, Boas's photographic documents of the Northwest Coast Indians gave the appearance of ethnographic "objectivity" something which Curtis' pictures lacked. Placing the individual in the landscape, as Curtis did, required aesthetic decisions about whether to allow modern detail and dress. Covering up the background relieved the photographer from "filling-in" missing cultural detail.
Thank you Prof. Strauss for the opportunity to refresh my mind with such an interesting topic!
Thank you for your answer Ms. Destro!
You are getting to the heart of the issue. These notions of cultural authenticity and objectivity of a photograph permeated the visual arts and cultural theories through the mid-20th century. Today, in our image-saturated social media reality it is more relevant than ever. I have read accounts of Boas' curmudgeonly attitude towards Curtis, but I have yet to see any primary or even secondary sources that researchers have based this on. David, above, identified the members of Roosevelt's committee to review the case, so we should expect there to be some trace in the presidential archives - I'm in touch with them but might need to make a trip to Washington to see this through.
What words did Boas use to make his case? How did he talk about objectivity, authenticity, and the problems he saw with including a natural setting in a photograph? How did Boas critique the famously doctored images where Curtis removed modern artifacts (e.g. clock) to further his romanticized portrayal of the American Indians? It is one of the earliest and more significant examples of a modern debate over cultural authenticity, fetishization, appropriation, etc.
I'll continue searching for these sources.
Sincerely, Mr. Ted Strauss (I am not a professor :)
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