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Vanishing Race

Currency:USD Category:Art Start Price:750.00 USD Estimated At:1,500.00 - 2,500.00 USD
Vanishing Race
Vanishing Race
Artist: Curtis, EdwardDate of Birth: 1868-1952
Medium: Photograph
Dimensions: 12 x 15 1/2 inches
Signed: Signed lower right
Verso:

Edward Curtis, the “Shadow Catcher,” spent the summer of 1900 with Field and Stream editor George Bird Grinnell on the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana. There, his monumental project, a complete photographic record entitled The North American Indian—that would come to twenty massive volumes—was born. Curtis raced to capture the vanishing races in the twilight of their tragic grandeur. The Vanishing Race, 1904, is perhaps the artist’s best known image, largely because of its composition. The line of mounted Navajo recedes geometrically into the vanishing point of the picture. At left, one rider flanks the line. Particulate light, falling like stardust across the plane of the picture, is a metaphor for vanishing, for disappearing—for Curtis’s entire project.