Indian Whalers Stripping Their Prey at Neah Bay 1910

Asahel Curtis’s photograph captures a moment of labor and community, sometime in the early 20th century. The sepia tone flattens the scene, turning it into a study of textures and forms, a monochromatic world where the rough skin of the whale meets the varied textiles of the whalers’ clothing. The image is so much about the tactile: the slickness of the whale, the grit of the beach, the damp air. Look at the way the figures are arranged around the whale, a jumble of limbs and torsos, each person seemingly absorbed in their task. The whale, massive and inert, becomes a kind of communal canvas, upon which the whalers inscribe their labor. The figures, in their hats and jackets, their bodies bent in effort, recall the paintings of Millet, where peasants are ennobled through their work. Curtis, like Millet, finds a certain beauty in the everyday, a poetry in the physical act of making a living. Is it a record? A document? It's a bit of both, and maybe something more.