Asahel Curtis shot thousands of images in the early 20th century. Knute Berger talks about the effort to share them with the public for the first time.

Asahel Curtis, the renowned Pacific Northwest photographer, was amazingly prolific. He documented regional life for 50 years, from the 1890s to the 1940s. Crosscut’s resident historian Knute Berger explored Curtis’ work and legacy in Season 5 of the Mossback’s Northwest video series, but that legacy now has a new chapter. 

As Berger detailed in a more recent episode of Mossback’s Northwest, he’s revisiting Curtis’ story thanks to a new project that aims to digitize the approximately 60,000 glass plate and nitrate negatives that make up the photographer’s massive archive.  

The Washington State Historical Society will spend the next few years painstakingly scanning each one. The goal is not only to preserve the history the images contain, but also to share them — for free — with the public.  

In this episode of Mossback, Berger joins co-host Stephen Hegg to discuss the digitization project and all it entails, as well as a handful of remarkable photographs the process has turned up already. Plus, they dig into the philosophical aspects of photography in an increasingly online, AI-driven world, where notions of fact and reality can seem elusive. 

For more on all things Mossback, visit crosscut.com/mossback. To reach Knute Berger directly, drop him a line at [email protected]. And if you’d like an exclusive weekly newsletter from Knute, where he offers greater insight into his latest historical discoveries, become a Crosscut member today.

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Credits

Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger

Producer: Seth Halleran

Story editors: Sara Bernard and Sarah Menzies