Winter 2006
Indigenous Images
Photo by Richard G. Anderson
In the living room of Christopher Cardozo's home near Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis, there is a small photograph of Teddy Roosevelt. The bespectacled president, with his bristle-brush mustache and trademark scowl, is immediately recognizable. But at the time that the picture was taken, in1904, the man behind the camera, Edward S. Curtis, was poised to become almost as well known as the politician himself—chiefly for his powerful photographs of Native Americans.
"Curtis was a successful Seattle studio photographer," Cardozo explains. "But at the turn of the century, he took a trip to the Great Plains with his friend George Bird Grinnell—and he witnessed one of the last performances of the ceremonial Sun Dance. The trip changed his life. He devoted himself to documenting every possible aspect of Native American life, a culture he believed was about to vanish."
Cardozo, 57, is well-versed in the events of Curtis's life. A St. Paul native and a graduate of the University of Minnesota (B.F.A.'71; J.D. '77), he is today perhaps the foremost collector of Curtis' works in the world: His collection of the Wisconsin-born photographer's work, honed over the course of several decades, includes more than 4,000 pieces in seven different media, including photogravures, goldtones on glass, and negatives. Portions of Cardozo's personal trove are currently being shown in Europe as part of traveling exhibitions, and the U.S. State Department has borrowed several pieces from Cardozo for an exhibit on indigenous peoples that the government is sending on a South American tour.
"Curtis created more than 40,000 negatives, and most people have seen just a tiny, tiny portion of his output," Cardozo says. "It's immensely satisfying to expose other people to his work. People are moved by it. They have emotional, aesthetic, and spiritual responses they didn't expect. I've seen people in tears."
Pictures can affect people deeply. It's one of the reasons why Cardozo majored in photography and film at the U. After graduation, he drifted to Southern Mexico, where he spent several months photographing the residents of a small, impoverished village. When a friend noted that his images echoed the work of Curtis, Cardozo immediately hunted for a book of Curtis's photos, further fanning his interest in Curtis's art. In the late 1970s, after deciding against a career as either a commercial photographer or a lawyer, he plunged into the world of private collecting.
For much of the next decade, Cardozo worked as a private art dealer and lived "the hippie life" in Mexico. From 1991 to 2003, he ran a gallery in Aspen, Colorado, that dealt almost exclusively in Curtis prints and ephemera. He still operates a company in St. Paul that produces contemporary originals from Curtis' negatives, and he has written no fewer than eight books about Curtis and his art since 1993.
Music and art of nearly every stripe interest Cardozo, but photography has always been his chief interest—as a practitioner and collector. "Emotionally and aesthetically there's something stirring about photographs," he says. "Part of it, I think, is that most of them are based, at least initially, in reality." After years of neglecting his own artistic sensibilities, Cardozo recently bought a digital camera and began taking pictures of his own again.
He also has a keen interest in the future of photography. He recently endowed a $50,000 scholarship for graduate students in the field, and he has made a major contribution to a scholarship commemorating Gus Gustafson, a U graduate and photographer who worked in the Twin Cities. Over the years, the Weisman Art Museum and the Minneapolis Institute of Art have also been beneficiaries of Cardozo's generosity.
Cardozo's house is filled with artwork — a testament to his passion and his career. Contemporary photographs hang on the walls in many of the rooms in his house, and in recent years he has begun collecting carvings and masks on trips to Africa, Japan, and India. But in the end, Curtis is the artist who commands most of his attention as an author, exhibitor and collector.
"In a sense, I'm driven by a sense of mission, of carrying on what Curtis himself wanted," Cardozo says. "He wanted these photographs seen by as many people as possible. By publishing books and participating with exhibitions, I've been able to help spread its impact. I've tried to pick up the baton that Curtis left on the trail."