Roland (Royal Jr.) W. Reed (June 22, 1864 – December 14, 1934), 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.
Early life
Roland Reed was born near Omro, Wisconsin about eight miles west of Oshkosh. His father, Royal Sr. (1827-1907), was a farmer and Civil War veteran. His mother, Mary Jane Hammond (1834-1904), was a homemaker. Roland was the fourth of six children. He and his youngest sibling, Mabel, were the only two to survive to adulthood.
Reed developed an early affinity for Native Americans through associations he had with neighboring Indians while growing up. He also fostered a thirst for adventure that would stay with him throughout his life.
Reed left home at about the age of 18. He journeyed to Minnesota where he worked in a sawmill for a period of time. In 1885 he had his first exposure to the Plains Indians while working for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Shortly afterward, he returned to Minnesota, where he began a five-year period of exploration and adventure. Traveling down the Mississippi River to Memphis, TN, he then headed through the west across Arkansas, Texas, and New Mexico, finally winding up in Montana in 1890. There he went to work for the Great Northern Railway. He also employed the artistic skills that had been fostered by his mother doing portrait sketches of Piegan and Blackfeet Indians as well as landscape sketches and watercolors in various towns along the Great Northern route.
In 1893 he met Daniel Dutro, a Civil War veteran and photographer in Havre, MT. Reed apprenticed with Dutro, and shortly thereafter became Dutro's partner. They furnished Indian photographs to the news department of the Great Northern Railway as well as doing studio portrait photography. For a short time in 1897, Reed worked for the Associated Press in Alaska photographing the Klondike Gold Rush, but soon returned to Havre, MT.
Career
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, Canadathe 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.