page_title: Roland W. Reed
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Roland W. Reed / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Plains
context_page_description: Roland W. Reed, an American artist and photographer, was part of an early 20th century group of photographers of Native Americans known as pictorialists.
  Pictorialists were influenced by the late 19th Century art movement, Impressionism, and their photography was characterized by an emphasis on lighting and focus. Rather than record an image as it was, pictorialists were more interested in re-creating an image as they thought it might have been. Part artist and part scientist, they endeavored to have their re-creations reflect not only the highest artistic value, but unquestioned ethnological accuracy as well. At the beginning of the 20th century a number of pictorialists, noticing the extremely deleterious impact of reservation life on Native Americans, wanted to recreate in photographs the Indian's life and ways as they had been in better times, rather than record how it had actually become.
context_section_description: Reed left Montana in 1899 and opened his own photo studio in Ortonville, MN, where his sister Mabel lived with her husband Ova Chamberlin.   He quickly developed a multi-state reputation as an excellent portrait photographer, especially of children, and a photographer of local landscapes.
  As his business grew, he opened a second studio about 250 miles away in Bemidji, MN.  After a few years, he began to periodically venture from his Bemidji Studio to photograph the Ojibwe Indians on nearby reservations. In 1907 he sold his Ortonville and Bemidji studios and went to live near the Ojibwe Red Lake Reservation to begin his pursuit of portraying the North American Indian.  This task became his full-time mission for the next two years.
  
  In 1909 Reed returned to Montana.  He opened a studio in Kalispell, MT, near what would become the western entrance to Glacier National Park.  In addition to portrait photography work, he sold copies of his Indian photographs and Native pottery, baskets, and rugs.  He also began what would become over the next six years an extensive project of photographing the Plains Indians of Northern Montana and Southern Alberta, Canada—the Blackfeet, Piegan, Blood, Flathead, and Cheyenne. 
  Much of Reed's effort was spent in and around Glacier National Park against the stunning majesty of the Rocky Mountains.  In addition, he began to work with Louis Hill and the Great Northern Railroad on a number of different promotional and photographic projects.  Many of his images were used in the Railroad's "See America First" campaign, which encouraged people to experience the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains by traveling via the Great Northern Railroad and staying at their grand lodges in and around Glacier National Park, rather than traveling to Europe to see the Alps.
  Reed also provided the Great Northern with large reprints of a number of his photos to decorate various stations along their line as well as their building at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, CA.
  During his time in Montana, Reed became part of a community of artists and writers in the area, many of whom also had associations with the Great Northern Railroad and Glacier National Park.  Among these were artists Charlie Russell, Julius Seyler, Johannes Andersen, and writer Mary Roberts Rinehart.  A number of other authors used Reed's images (although unattributed) in their books, including The White Quiver by Helen Fitzgerald Sanders; Enchanted Trails of Glacier National Park by Agnes Christina Laut, and Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park  by James Willard Schultz.
  
  In 1913 Reed spent a number of months in Arizona photographing the Navajo and Hopi.  Many of these photographs are against the extraordinary backdrop of Canyon de Chelly.  During this time he developed a relationship with John Hubbell and his sons.  The Hubbells had various commercial enterprises throughout the Southwest. 
  Reed returned to Montana in 1913, and then opened a branch studio in San Diego, CA.  Actually more of a souvenir shop than photo studio, he used the new location primarily to sell Indian pottery, baskets and rugs as well as prints of his photographs.
  During his time in southern California, Reed became acquainted with a number of influential individuals, such as Hector Alliot and Charles Fletcher Lummis, who were deeply involved in preserving the culture of the Southwest Indians.  They recommended that his photographs be prominently displayed at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition held at Balboa Park in San Diego. His work was exhibited in the Indian Arts Building (later known as the House of Charm), and was awarded the Gold Medal for "pictures of an educational and historic value".  By this time he had also moved his studio to Coronado, but soon sold it to his assistant, Lou Bigelow.  He returned to Kalispell to conclude any outstanding business, then began a period of semi-retirement, returning to Ortonville, MN where his sister Mabel still lived.
caption: The Eagle, Roland W. Reed,
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