Forgotten Gold in the Ethnology Archives

Fig 1. Edward Curtis’ Orotone Legacy: Seattle photographer Edward Curtis’ earliest photographic images of Native Americans were along the shorelines of Seattle, dating from c.1895/96-1898, such as this image titled “Homeward.” This orotone is a particularly superlative example of Curtis’ application of dreamy Pictorialist effects: blanketed in a shimmering golden glow, five Native people are silhouetted against a shadowy sunset sky as they approach the shoreline of Puget Sound in a west coast-style canoe. (Orotone housed in the Burke Ethnology Archives, L-4871/1. Edward S. Curtis, “Homeward,” orotone photograph, 11” x 14,” created circa 1917-1921.)

Lustrous. Precious. Honey-Colored. These adjectives are but a few that may be uttered to describe the novel qualities of an orotone, or goldtone photograph. The orotone is truly a unique creature, transcending the traditional two-dimensional nature of a photograph to take on a full sense of depth with innumerable planes. This unconventional depth is heightened by the orotone’s shimmering metallic gold appearance—an appearance that transforms its depicted subject into an esteemed token of admiration.

Since my first encounter with an orotone in 2008, and my subsequent discovery of the photographic process’ prosperity in my own backyard of Seattle, I have developed a deep fascination (and some might even say obsession) with the orotone, driving me to spend much of my spare time in the last few years engaged in a sleuthing exercise to uncover the hidden history of this early 20^th-century process. One of the first assigned missions I eagerly accepted when commencing my work in the Burke’s Ethnology Archives was to begin cataloguing and conducting in-depth research on the thirteen orotones warehoused at the Burke, the lion’s share depicting Native American cultures.

Before I delve into the phenomenal orotone examples housed at the Burke, one may be wondering, “What exactly is an orotone photograph?”

The foundation of an orotone photograph is most readily comparable to the slender and pocket-side photographic slides of our youth that were intended for projection and collective group enjoyment. Akin to these slides, where a positive photographic image has been developed onto a thin transparent plastic film base, an orotone photograph is printed and developed onto a slim, clear sensitized plate of transparent glass and toned from the typical black to an amber hue. The orotone’s most definitive feature is the brilliancy it receives from the gold-colored varnish that is applied by brush or flowed onto the backside (the emulsion side) of the glass plate after development and toning. The result: a distinctively smoky photograph with a starry golden internal glow.  An orotone is a piece of interactive art in its own sense: one may appear upon first inspection from a distance as somber as a tarnished penny, but with a slight step to the left or a slide to the right an orotone will come alive like the prisms of a yellow diamond. (Fig. 2)

Fig. 2 A Close-Up Look:  Viewed closely, you can witness the super fine grain of the golden bronzing powders used in the orotone’s backing. Despite persistent claims over the decades that the orotone’s backing is prepared with real powdered gold pigment or gold leaf, scientific analysis has proven otherwise. The gold-colored varnish or veneer consists of bronzing powders mixed with a varnishing liquid—both common and popular industrial products used in the liquid bronzing of house radiators and other metal works in the early decades of the 20^th century.

 (Detail of “The Wood Carrier” (Quinault Woman) orotone by A. C. Girard housed in the Burke Ethnology Archives, L-3823/2. A. C. Girard, “The Wood Carrier,” orotone photograph, 5” x 7,” created circa 1920-1945.)

 

And what of this Seattle-connection, you may ask?

The orotone process possesses deep-seated foundations in the greater-Seattle area of the Pacific Northwest, the seed of the process germinating and reaching an incomparable level of popularity in the bosom of Seattle during the early decades of the 20^th century. The orotone process today is in great part synonymous with the renowned Seattle-based photographer Edward S. Curtis and Native American imagery (Fig. 1), but many other lesser-known photographers of the city and region created orotones as well encapsulating not only Native American cultures, but also natural wonders of the Pacific Northwest—particularly of our esteemed Mt. Rainier. 

While coveted by collectors in our present day, these Northwest treasures were expensive from their inception: an 11” x 14” orotone by Edward Curtis cost a patron $15 in 1917, a staggering approximated equivalence of $250 in present day amounts—surely no small sum for the turn of the 20^th century! In all their golden sparkle, orotones were unquestionably a symbolic expression of wealth during their heyday from the late 1910s – early 1930s.

The Burke’s Orotone Holdings, and the Suspension of Native American Cultures in Perpetuity

The invitation to explore the Burke’s orotone holdings enticed me to delve deeper into the historical record to consider the crucial environing conditions under which Edward Curtis and other regional photographers—such as A. C. Girard of Aberdeen, WA (Fig. 3) and Frank LaRoche, Sr. of Seattle (Fig. 4) —created their orotone photographs of Native Americans. What phenomena shaped the development of and consumer demand of these metallic images that suspend Native American cultures in perpetuity?

Fig 3. One of my favorite orotone’s housed at the Burke is this evocative and graceful rendering of a young Makah woman and her infant daughter, titled “Rock-A-Bye Baby.” Created by Aberdeen, WA photographer A. C. Girard, the orotone shows the mother seated upon a traditional plaited cedar bark mat delicately rocking her child, held in a suspended cradle of cedar, with her big toe. The infant’s woven cedar bark sunshade is cast onto the floor mat, and an burden basket sits to the mother’s right.  (Orotone housed in the Burke Ethnology Archives, L-3823/1. A.C. Girard, “Rock-A-Bye Baby,” orotone photograph, 8” x 10,” created circa 1920-1945.)   

Fig 4. “She was painted as [Seattle’s] own Pocahontas…Her bent figure and wrinkled face spoke of the forest and the snows. She was a quaint figure in the city’s history.” These words, penned in 1903 by a young UW scholar, speak of no one other than Keeskeeskiblue, commonly known as Princess or Queen Angeline, Chief Seattle’s eldest daughter.  Princess Angeline was one of the most photographed celebrities in Seattle before her death in 1896, and her legacy as an iconic figure continued well into the early decades of the 20^th century. This orotone by Frank LaRoche, Sr., created between 1917 and 1926, is a token of her enduring popularity to Seattlites. (Orotone housed in the Burke Ethnology Archives, Catalog ID: 2.5E1977. Frank LaRoche,Sr., “Queen Angeline,” orotone photograph, 8” x 10” in original pie crust frame, created circa 1917-26.  Quote: Frank Carlson A.B. “Chief Stealth,” The Bulletin of the University of Washington, The State University, Series III, no. 2, December 1903, p33.)

 

The middle- and upper-classes of America were affected by the notion of the Indian race as rapidly melting away with the approach of civilization and the government-enforced assimilation of Native American cultures. In turn, Americans longed for pictorial images that embodied notions of a collective nostalgia for the "vanishing Indian race." In an effort to retain or recapture the vanished past and appeal to the consciousness of consumers, photographers and painters alike ventured to rescue the modes of the supposedly doomed Indian race for perpetuity in visual object form.  

The Native American-themed orotone photographs that have trickled into the Burke’s Ethnology Archives over the past nine decades (six alone being gifts of Edward Curtis’ studio!) by Curtis, A. C. Girard, and Frank LaRoche in many ways reinforce these romantic, idealized visions of the American Indian that predominated white American culture of the era. They dance the line between documentation of Native cultures’ way of life and Pictorialism—the artistic philosophy fashionable for the generation and advocated for in several popular photographic trade journals of the Pacific Northwest from 1889 to the commencement of WWI.  These orotones, with their warm golden atmosphere and hazy romanticism, stimulate an aesthetic and emotional sensation in the beholder, suggesting (wrong as it is) with their flickering radiance the passing of a culture’s own light. For me, despite criticism that frequently swirls around the works of Edward Curtis and other photographers of his generation for their inauthentic and racial depictions, I accept that these orotones were created “through a veil of cultural preconceptions,”* and believe that they stimulate an appreciation for rich cultures divergent from my own. 

Want to learn more about the orotone process' invention, production techniques, and popularity? Check out this virtual exhibition.

Interested in hearing present-day Native Americans views on Edward Curtis’ photographic works? Watch this brief clip from Anne Makepeace’s Coming to Light documentary.

* “Edward Curtis: The North American Indian,” Portland Art Museum, Traditional Fine Art Online, Inc., 1996-1999, http://www.tfaoi.com/newsm1/n1m205.htm, 4 May 2010.

Posted By: Christy Hansen, Ethnology

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