The Wooing - Ojibwa

Minneapolis, MN: Gravure Engraving Company, 1908. Photogravure [31.5 cm x 21 cm] / [12.5" x 8"] on cream colored stock [45.5 cm x 35.5 cm] / [18" x 14"] Nice condition. One of most recognizable of all of Reed's images. "This picture offers great opportunity for the exercise of the imagination, but the taking of it meant weeks of painstaking effort, and the exercise of unlimited patience. First selection the spot in which I wished to take the picture, I had to devote weeks to the selection of suitable subjects to take the parts of the two young lovers. I finally found a young squaw who meet requirements as to features and physique, but her husband was (truncated) not at all fitted for such a scene, being a squat, bow-legged type. Keeping the girl in mind, I scoured the country for her mate and thirty miles away came upon a brave who appeared to be ideal for the part. The Indian's wife, however, was nearly the same in all dimensions and would never do as a model for the maiden in the picture which I had in mind. I was finally compelled to transport the entire family of each of the two people I selected, from their homes to the spot on Red Lake where I wished to take the picture. Parents, grandparents, younger brothers and sisters, dogs and other adjuncts had to be brought along. Then it took no small exercise of diplomacy to get the young people together without exciting jealousy on the part of their respective life partners, and even then it was days before they became well enough acquainted to enact their parts in the scene in a natural way." - Roland W. Reed describing 'The Wooing'

Roland W. Reed (1864-1934) was a photographer working in the American west, who was a largely self-funded in his effort to document the vanishing indigenous peoples he encountered and sought out. Many of his images were staged to offer romanticized depictions of these people as he wanted to see them. (Inventory #: 8380)