xaara

Well, I went through a phase where I was obsessed with the history of photography, mostly inspired by this fantastic book of photographs by Edward R. Curtis called The North American Indian. My parents had a copy when I was eight or nine, and I'd spend hours just flipping through it, staring at the pictures until my eyes hurt. Mom was of course very careful to present the images as viewpoints interpreted by someone ignorant of the cultures he was documenting; Curtis definitely saw the American Indians as primitive and framed them as such. And there is that problem with the photos. But laying aside the political, they're just beautiful art. (The photos are actually online here (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ienhtml/curthome.html).)

He's actually a decent professor--very smart, entertaining lecturer--but I dunno. I feel like I've learned a lot from him, but he's not one of the professors I can just sit back and love.