A person stands near the “Untitled” installation of miniature elevators by Maurizio Cattelan at a preview of the Postwar and Contemporary Art Evening Sale at Christie's auction house on November 4, 2011 in New York City. The 33-inch functioning elevator installation is expected to realize $400,000-$600,000 at the November 8 auction. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A boy carries empty sacks after bringing different types of plastic materials to a recycling station in Khartoum North April 16, 2015. People bring bottles and other plastic materials to the station for recycling, and get paid in return. (Photo by Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)

Diesel is poured into a container at theArea 10 shopping centre in Abuja, Nigeria May 25, 2015. Nigerian fuel marketers agreed to resume distribution on Monday after weeks of disruption led to chronic fuel shortages, bringing phone companies, banks and airlines to a standstill days before the inauguration of the country's new president. (Photo by Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

People pass by a vehicle almost completely submerged on a street covered with mud due to heavy floods in Tekija village September 17, 2014. One person died in Serbia and authorities scrambled to evacuate hundreds of people from villages threatened by rising rivers, officials said on Tuesday, in scenes recalling the devastating May flooding that killed dozens. (Photo by Djordje Kojadinovic/Reuters)

A Palestinian boy holds an umbrella as he runs near houses that witnesses said were destroyed or damaged by Israeli shelling during the most recent conflict between Israel and Hamas, on a rainy day in the east of Gaza City November 16, 2014. (Photo by Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

Sisters dressed as the Grady twins from the movie "The Shining" pose for a photo inside their house as they take part in the second edition of "Noche del Terror" (Horror night) during Halloween celebrations in the neighborhood of Churriana, near Malaga, southern Spain, October 31, 2015. (Photo by Jon Nazca/Reuters)

A pedestrian carries a shopping bag and looks at his phone while walking past a mural decorating a construction site in central Sydney on November 6, 2023. (Photo by David Gray/AFP Photo)

At the beginning of the 20th century, Edward S. Curtis set out to document what he saw as a disappearing race: the Native American. From 1907 to 1930, Curtis took more than 2,000 photos of 80 tribes stretching from the Great Plains to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. He then published and sold these photos, along with narrative text, in 20 volumes of work known as “The North American Indian”. It is one of the most significant collections of its kind, “probably the most important photographic document of its age and its topic,” said Jeffrey Garrett, associate university librarian for Special Libraries at Northwestern University. (Photo by Edward S. Curtis)