The Vanishing Clock

“In Mr. Curtis we have both an artist and a trained observer, whose pictures are pictures, not merely photographs; whose work has far more than mere accuracy, because it is truthful.” –Theadore Roosevelt

Edward Curtis’ In a Piegan Lodge presents Little Plume with his son Yellow Kidney surrounded by various objects such as a pipe, a blanket and numerous ropes. In Curtis’ original glass negative, marked x 3122 10 in the left hand corner, a clock is prominently displayed between them. Since Curtis’ vast project was to recreate the dress and habitat of North America’s First Nations before contact with European culture, it is odd that the the clock wasn’t removed by the photographer but rather retouched out of the photogravure image for Curtis’ book “The North American Indian.” While retouching is an essential part of photography, the comparison of the two versions, with and without the clock, speaks to the inconstancies in Curtis’ project as well as the larger project of all the photographic arts. In some sense, all photographs are pictures. Curtis’ pictures told the story of the vanishing race, the title of his most famous photograph. This trope infected most of the early photography of western North America, causing insult and injury to the indigenous American cultures that had lived with European settlers for hundreds of years when Curtis began his project.

The slippage evident in Curtis’ photographic project serves as a marker along the journey toward today’s photographic epoch in the digital age. Today, Photoshop is a very sophisticated retouching tool. In 2025, Photoshop offers a new AI powered feature that will remove “unwanted” objects in the picture frame. I used this “tool” to recreate and “improve” Curtis’ retouching of his original In a Piegan Lodge negative. Along the way to removing the boxed clock, to uncover the coiled rope sitting behind it, the AI tool made a number of evocative mistakes, telling by chance a surreal narrative of modernization.

The Vanishing Clock, 2025, HD video, 3:29 min.

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