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Lesson 4

Who was Edward Curtis and why did he dedicate his life to documenting Native Americans? We will learn more about the life and work of Edward Curtis by watching and discussing a full-length documentary titled Coming to Light: The Edward S. Curtis Story.

Lesson Goals

  • Can I use my notes from a Video Note-Taking Tool to establish and explain an accurate understanding of the central ideas of Coming to Light, a documentary about Edward S. Curtis?

  • Can I recognize and interpret important relationships among key details (visual images, narration, characterizations) and ideas within a documentary film?

Texts

Optional

  • Multimedia
    • Coming to Light: The Edward S. Curtis Story, Anne Makepeace, Makepeace Productions, 2001

Materials

Tools

Reference Guides

Question Sets

Editable Google Docs

Activity 1: Discuss

We will generate a list of questions we have about Edward Curtis, his life, his work, and its impact on documentary photojournalism and Native American people.

Step 1

As a class, discuss your impressions so far of Edward Curtis as a photographer and photojournalist.

Step 2

Access the Questioning Reference Guide and read the Posing Inquiry Questions for Research section.

With a partner, brainstorm a list of questions you currently have about Edward Curtis, his life, his work, and its impact.

Compile a class list of inquiry (want to know) questions about Edward Curtis: things you hope to learn about him as you watch an informational documentary about his life and work.

Step 3

As a class, discuss what it means to document a historical event through photographs, writing, or film.

Discuss why Edward Curtis’s work is often categorized as documentary photojournalism and what that term might mean. Make an entry for the term in your Vocabulary Journal.

Discuss the documentary film genre and the ways in which documentaries use photographs and other visual imagery, narration, interviews or dramatizations, and music to tell a story and document historical figures, events, or issues. Suggest documentary films you have watched and how they tell their stories.

Activity 2: View

We will watch a 2001 documentary by Anne Makepeace titled Coming to Light: The Edward S. Curtis Story to discover answers to our questions about Edward Curtis, his life, his work, and its impact on documentary photojournalism and Native American people.

Access and watch the 2001 documentary film by Anne Makepeace titled Coming to Light: The Edward S. Curtis Story.

As you watch, focus on one or more of the questions from the class inquiry list and use a Video Note-Taking Tool to record details of the documentary that relate to the questions you are focusing on.

After watching, use your notes to write a short summary of what you have learned about Edward Curtis that is related to the questions you considered.

Activity 3: Discuss

We will share and discuss what we have learned and observed about the life, work, and impact of documentary photojournalist Edward Curtis from the documentary film coming to light.

Step 1

Using the class list of inquiry questions as an organizer, share and discuss what you recorded on your Video Note-Taking Tools and then summarized. Using your notes and summary, explain what you have learned about Edward Curtis, his life, his work, and its impact on documentary photojournalism and Native American people.

Step 2

Use text-specific questions such as these to discuss how Anne Makepeace has brought Curtis’s story to life:

  1. How do the film’s narration and the dramatized voice of Edward Curtis himself bring his story to life?

  2. How does Makepeace use and sequence Curtis’s photographic images to provide a visual record of his work, examples of his “expressive pictorial style,” and evidence of its impact on other photographers?

  3. How do interviews with contemporary Native Americans provide varied perspectives on Curtis, the truth of his documentary photographs, and his impact on Native peoples?

  4. How do interviews with Curtis experts enrich your understanding of the importance of his work and its legacy as documentary photojournalism?

Activity 4: Write

In response to our viewing and discussion of coming to light, we will write a reflective entry in our Learning Logs, thinking about a quotation from Edward Curtis regarding his life and work.

Near the end of Coming to Light, the dramatized voice of Edward Curtis says, “This is my life’s work and it is the only work I knew that was worth doing.”

Based on what you have now learned about Edward Curtis, his life, his work, and its impact on documentary photojournalism and Native American people, make and support a claim about Edward Curtis’s life’s work and whether, in your opinion, it was worth doing.