"Is it at any time alright to set up a shot while doing a documentary photo shoot? "
I want to say I think yes, but it depends on the situation. If you need to set up a documentary shot to make a point that you couldnt get any other way, i think it is absolutely fine to do that. But i think that one needs to make notice of this somewhere. I dont think its bad if you do that. If you can get the shot then great, if not its ok to re create it as long as you mention it.
"Has the standard of ethics risen over the last 100 years that we can not do that any more? "
I think that in our day and age Edward Curtis Indians wouldnt be able to hold any vadility at all if they were taken now. They would defintly be recognized as fake pictures. I dont even think that anyone would dare do that because of the stupid things people get sued over now-a-days. But that goes with what i was saying earlier though. If they were set up pictures depicting things/events that actually took place i would say we could use the pictures as a kind of "social/histoircal" document to make refrence to. But then again, that would defintly be open to debate because its just One way One person saw how it would be done. So that might come into question. maybe thats why there is such a variety of text books for history.
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Supermurray:
Making a photo 100 years ago took at least a 15 minute set up time. Curtis was using the "new" dry plate negatives in 1898 that used shutter speeds up to 1/100 sec. Prior to the dry plate shutter speeds were so slow that blinking an eye would blur a picture. It was still slow compared to today. He used a bellows camera with a ground glass back, each plate was inserted by hand, and the picture was upside down and reversed. Yes, you needed to ask people to please remain in place so the picture could be made. The process of making a picture back then begged for patience. As a documentarian, yes, he had to pay people who were willing to give the time to pose.
I can tell you that there is much more to Edward Curtis than his pictures. Have you read any of the text from his 20 volumes of work, to see what he was saying 100 years ago?
If not, I recommend watching The Indian Picture Opera, (Amazon.com, on dvd), and you will hear nearly an hour of Curtis's lecture of 1911 along with hundreds of his pictures. You can also read some of the text from the Northwest Universities Curtis site.
Since collectors have been ripping the North American Indian volumes apart to sell his original photos, it's not easy to come by this material. The Curtis text has been widely discarded and ignored. He is widely misunderstood.
Modern day academicians are having fun with their own interpretation of history. It's not their fault, I doubt they have read the text.
Information is everything.
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