Tracy Rector’s work talks back to the lonely solitude of Curtis’s portraits. COURTESY OF SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
A portrait is how you see someone. It’s how you want someone else to see them, too. Later, when someone looks at it, they see who you saw, but also they see you, your understanding or your not, your limits and flaws, you wrestling with your seeing and not seeing right.
Double Exposure, now on exhibit at Seattle Art Museum, includes a broad selection of portraits by Edward S. Curtis, and it will make you think about what it is to see someone, to make an image, who gets to do it when. This is because Curtis’s works are displayed in conversation with works by three contemporary Native artists: Will Wilson, Marianne Nicolson, and Tracy Rector.