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Original circa 1915 goldtone photograph by Edward S. Curtis, entitled ‘Out of Darkness,’ 13.5 x 10.5, depicting five Navajo riders on horseback emerging from the shadowed brush of Tesakod Canyon, a narrow branch of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, printed from Curtis’s original 1904 negative. The composition captures a dramatic transition from deep shadow into light, a hallmark of Curtis’s carefully staged yet evocative imagery of the American Southwest. Lower right bears Curtis’s copyright credit, inherent to the original negative. Presented in its original Curtis-designed ‘batwing’ frame, to an overall size of 18.5 x 15.5. The image was published as a photogravure in The North American Indian, Portfolio I, Plate 37. Curtis described the scene: “In Tesakod canon, a small branch of Canon de Chelly. At the point where the picture was made the gorge is very narrow.” In fine condition.
Curtis conducted extensive fieldwork among the Navajo in the early twentieth century, producing some of his most enduring imagery in and around Canyon de Chelly. The North American Indian, undertaken with the financial backing of J. Pierpont Morgan and the encouragement of President Theodore Roosevelt, ultimately grew into a monumental project of twenty volumes of text and twenty accompanying portfolios of photogravures, issued between 1907 and 1930. Portfolio I—one of the earliest published installments—included Out of Darkness as Plate 37.
Curtis’s orotones, or goldtones, were distinct from the portfolio photogravures. Instead of printing on paper, he created images on glass plates backed with gold-toned metallic particles, producing a warm, luminous effect with a depth and richness unique to the process. The surface lends a remarkable sense of atmosphere, particularly suited to compositions like this one, where figures emerge gradually from shadow into light.
The Western Americana auction of Jochen Zeitz.
