Portraits of the past

A century ago the American Indian culture in Montana straddled two worlds: Life on government-imposed reservations and life as it had been for centuries.

It’s the foothold in the old world that photographer Royal W. “Roland” Reed Jr. spent much of a lifetime re-creating.

The expanse of Reed’s work — including his many years in Kalispell and the Glacier National Park area — are detailed in a soon-to-be-released book, “Alone with the Past: The Life and Photographic Art of Roland W. Reed,” written by Ernest R. Lawrence and published by Afton Historical Society Press in Afton, Minn.

Reed was one of a few professional photographers in his day who are now known as pictorialists. They set out to document what they saw as a vanishing culture of American Indian tribes.

Like his contemporaries, Reed posed many of his subjects, creating them as the Indians he imagined them to have been in the past, not as he actually found them on reservations at the time, Lawrence explained in a telephone interview last week from his home in Oconomowoc, Wis.

“His work is a little controversial among Native American communities,” Lawrence said.

The book, which includes Reed’s work with the Ojibwe in Minnesota, several tribes in Montana including the Blackfeet and Flathead, and the Navajo and Hopi in Arizona, talks about some of the ploys Reed used to get his subjects to pose and express themselves as he felt they should.

During one photo shoot with the Blackfeet, Reed couldn’t get two Indians to make the proper facial expressions as they shot arrows from a canoe — until Reed stuck silver dollars into the crevices of tree bark and told them they could keep the dollars they shot out of the trees.

“‘I had been paying these two Indians a regular wage for three days in an effort to get this one picture,” Reed wrote to H.R. Foster of The Minneapolis Journal in 1923, describing his “sudden inspiration” to use the coins for target practice. “‘Every one you knock down is yours,’ I shouted. On the next circuit the archer centered five silver dollars with seven whizzing shafts, and while I was out of pocket that much money, I was in pocket one of the very few animated Indian photographs in existence.”

It took him eight days to get the photo he wanted as the Indians kept paddling and shooting dollars out of the trees. Reed later said that shoot cost him $100 in coins.

“By the dawn of the twentieth century, the era of the American West as a frontier had all but ended,” Lawrence wrote in the book’s introduction. “At the same time the life and existence of its original inhabitants, the American Indian, had reached a final point of change and would never again be as it was. They no longer traveled freely across the landscape, but instead had been relocated to the confinement of reservations.”

Lawrence set out to write a book about Reed and compile his photographs as something to keep him busy in retirement after a career heading a number of private equity-funded organizations in a variety of industries.

He’s had a lifelong interest in history and the American West, so tackling the Reed project was a natural extension of that interest.

The seed for the book was planted three decades ago when he and his wife acquired a large number of Reed prints from Kramer Gallery in Minneapolis. Lawrence’s brother-in-law and Leon Kramer were good friends, so that allowed Lawrence the initial access to Reed’s work.

A couple of serendipitous leads to additional stashes of Reed’s work prolonged the completion of “Alone with the Past,” but were invaluable additions to the book.

LAwrence knew Reed’s work was not as well known as some of Reed’s contemporaries, such as Edward Curtis, who “enjoyed broad backing and financial support for his work.

“Reed did not; his work was solitary, self-directed and self-funded,” he said.

Reed had every intention of documenting his body of work. Lawrence notes in the book that shortly before Reed died in 1934 — he slipped on a banana peel, broke his back and shortly thereafter contracted double pneumonia and died — Reed had begun to produce a book that he hoped “would be the pinnacle of his life’s work and present the American Indian in their true glory as seen in his photographs.”

As Lawrence began compiling material for the book, he tapped into a band of Reed fans across the country.

“Frankly, I was astounded at the cult of Reed collectors who exist,” Lawrence said. “He was a fascinating guy. It’s great to give him his due.”

Reed spent a considerable amount of time in Western Montana. During his first stay in the area in the 1890s he and business partner Dan Dutro provided Indian photographs to the Great Northern Railway for advertising. Reed’s work was featured in the “See America First” campaign that promoted rail travel to Glacier National Park.

As a rule, though, Reed was quite selective about how his photographs were presented to the public, Lawrence said.

“He had little interest in exploiting commercial publication opportunities and, for the most part, refused to allow his work to appear on promotional items such as calendars,” Lawrence said. “At one point, he turned down $15,000 for approximately 200 negatives to prevent them from being used arbitrarily in advertising for which he would have no input or control.”

After his stint in the Flathead Valley in the 1890s, Reed went back to Minnesota, where he’d operated a photography studio in Ortonville, but returned to Kalispell in 1909 and opened a studio in the Noffsinger Building.

“His next six years in Montana would prove to be the most prolific of his photographic career,” Lawrence said.

Along with portrait work, Reed’s studio became home to a new business venture known as “Reed’s Indians.” He offered for sale prints of his Indian photographs and goods such as Indian rugs and blankets.

“Reed promoted his new business in parades and other community activities in the Kalispell area,” Lawrence wrote.

The Daily Inter Lake, which followed Reed’s career on many occasions, reprinted the Helena Independent’s review of Reed’s work displayed at the state fair in 1914.

The newspaper gushed that Reed “has on display at the fair as fine a collection of Indian art studies as have ever been established in the United States ... the photographer may well be called a creative artist, for not only are his groupings and settings planned with an eye to the richest possible effects, but the execution itself assumes an individuality rarely found in any mechanical art.”

The Helena Independent was impressed with Reed’s ability to pose his subjects.

“Mr. Reed has a method of posing that is born not only to the artist’s skill and training, but rather of his sympathy and understanding of the dying race.”

Lawrence notes in his book that beyond Reed’s patience and persistence, he was “obsessive” about details and accuracy.

During his time in Montana, Reed became part of the “artistic community” and became friends with painter Charlie Russell, among others. Reed’s photo portraits of Russell and Russell’s wife Nancy, taken in 1921, are included in the book.

“This group found that they had much in common, including a deep appreciation for the overall beauty of Glacier National Park; a deep respect for its former inhabitants, the Blackfeet...” the book notes.

After Reed’s untimely death in Colorado Springs at age 70, he was buried in an unmarked grave. Lawrence intends to “get him a prop The er headstone” at some point in the near future, a further tribute to a man and his volume of work that became a “labor of love” for Lawrence.

“I’m convinced he had deep sensitivity and respect and appreciation” for the American Indians, Lawrence said.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.