Join members of the Boston Association of PBK for a book discussion via Zoom, scheduled for the evening of Tuesday, June 30, 2026, at 7:30 pm. (Please note we are meeting on Tuesday!)

Guests of participants are welcome and please come even if you haven’t finished (or even started!) the book.

The discussion will be on Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan

Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous portrait photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time. He moved in rarefied circles, a friend to presidents, vaudeville stars, leading thinkers. But when he was thirty-two years old, in 1900, he gave it all up to pursue his Great Idea: to capture on film the original inhabitants before the old ways disappeared. Curtis spent the next three decades documenting the stories and rituals of more than eighty North American tribes. It took tremendous perseverance —  ten years alone to persuade the Hopi to allow him to observe their Snake Dance ceremony. And the undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate. Curtis would amass more than 40,000 photographs and 10,000 audio recordings that would redefine the history of photography, and he is credited with making the first narrative documentary film. In the process, the charming rogue with the grade school education created the most definitive archive of the American Indian. How did one man with a grade-school education create the most definitive archive of a people?

Please RSVP to thomas@pbkboston.org or to tlaage@hotmail.com.

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87210599496?pwd=c25oYmdQbXBWWFJPakxqdmlacE1FZz09