This is another entry in my New Deal pictorial series. It just takes a roundabout route to get there.
We start a generation before the Great Depression, as Seattle photographer Edward Curtis was traveling the west for his epic photographic record of Native Americans. This may be the best known of his of his thousands of images, each contact printed from 14×17 inch glass plate negatives, and rendered in copper plate photogravure for limited edition publication:
It’s Cañon de Chelly in Navajo country near Chinle, AZ, photographed 1904. There’s a lot of controversies and opinions on Curtis’s work, which might rightly be called his mission. Or even obsession. I’m gonna add a few opinions of my own, some context, and then bring it around to the New Deal.