Alone with the Past: The Life and Photographic Art of Roland W. Reed

ROLAND REED'S decision came at the last possible moment. By the dawn of the twentieth century, this country's Native Americans were living on reservations, their old ways of life unalterably changed. Royal W. (Roland) Reed, Jr. (1864-1934) was one of a small number of professional photographers now known as Pictorialists who set out to document this "vanishing" race. Employing new artistic techniques and often posing their subjects, the Pictorialists recreated the "noble savage" as they imagined them to have been in the past, not as they presently found them. Reed's better known contemporary, Edward Curtis, enjoyed broad backing and financial support for his work. Reed did not; his work was solitary, self-directed, and self-funded. Critics agree that Reed's photographs are equal, both technically and artistically, to those of Curtis, but his work has remained largely unknown and unpublished...