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Who was George Bird Grinnell and how did he influence Edward S. Curtis?
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Edward S. Curtis
Self-portrait, photogravure by Edward S. Curtis, 1899; in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
George Bird Grinnell was an amateur anthropologist and the editor of the magazine Forest and Stream.1
He played a pivotal role in the career of Edward S. Curtis after the two met during the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition, where Curtis served as the official photographer. Grinnell’s influence was instrumental in shaping Curtis’s professional trajectory; through his interactions with Grinnell and other natural history specialists on the expedition, Curtis was inspired to undertake a comprehensive photographic and ethnographic record of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas living in western North America.1