Circulating Selves:
Pictures
as Cultures of Resistance
AfAm 40A, 2009, Week 4
Tuesday, Week 4:
Westerbeck and Painter
Guiding Questions:
What were different strategies Truth and Douglass used to fight
for social justice?
Why were issues of truth and credibility such significant
preoccupations for Truth and Douglass?
How did norms of gender influence Truth’s and Douglass’s
self-fashioning?
How/Why do Truth & Douglass continue to be such known
and celebrated historical figures today?
Key Terms, Tuesday, Week 4:
Westerbeck and Painter
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Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
daguerreotype, carte de visite, & cabinet card
scientific racism: polygenism, phrenology, physiognomy
“specimen photographs” (Painter, 486)
American School of Ethnology
Frederick Douglass
Louis Agassiz
Sojourner Truth
Harriet Beecher Stowe
“invented greats” (Painter, 480)
AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES: “broadly defined, the
systematic study of the black experience…it is also the black
intellectual tradition as it has challenged and interacted
with Western civilization and cultures.”
--Marable, page 49
ART HISTORY: What does the art object look like, and why?
VISUAL STUDIES: How do ACTS OF LOOKING, seeing
and being seen, create who we are?
1.)
2.)
3.)
Main theses:
Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth consciously tried to
control their own public portrait images
These were acts of resistance
They focused on self creation & affirmation AND debunked
racist myths
4.)
Main theses:
Struggles for freedom and social justice continue even after
legal emancipation
WHY PORTRAITS?
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
James Buchanan
(president before Lincoln)
WHY PORTRAITS?
18th and 19th c. Prints from Type
Specimen Books
WHY PORTRAITS?
VISUAL FORMATS USED BY
DOUGLASS:
• frontispieces (engravings)
• daguerreotypes
• cartes de visite
• cabinet cards
• newspapers
Frontispiece Engraving and Title Page of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
Engraving of Frederick
Douglass from book by Wilson
Armistead:
A Tribute for the Negro: Being a
Vindication of the Moral,
Intellectual and Religious
Capabilities of the Colored
Portion of Mankind; with
Particular Reference to the
African Race (1848)
In a review of the book:
“That of Frederick
Douglass…has a much more
kindly and amiable expression,
than is generally thought to
characterize the face of a fugitive
slave.”
--Frederick Douglass, 1848
1845
1855
Beneath Image: “ENGRAVED BY J.C. BUTTRE FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE”
WHY
PHOTOGRAPHY?
Matthew Brady’s Studio ,
1861 (New York)
Printed in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper
Wood engraving
J. P. Ball’sStudio , 1854, Cincinnati Ohio
Wood Engraving
Printed in
Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion
Frederick Douglass,
Photographer unknown
Circa 1855
Daguerreotype
Abraham Lincoln,
By Matthew Brady
1860 & 1863
Cartes de visite
Portrait of an Unidentified Woman
ca. 1850
daguerreotype with applied color
7.0 x 5.5 cm.: 1/6 plate
Josiah Henson & Wife
c. 1877
Unidentified Man
ca. 1860
WHY
PHOTOGRAPHY?
Ad for runaway, By Louis Manigault
1863, August, GA (Manigault was
from SC)
Daguerreotype
1861
“AN INTRODUCTION. By DR. JAMES M’CUNE SMITH”
SCIENTIFIC RACISM
“[T]he democratic and scientific ideals of the Enlightenment
fostered both helpful egalitarianism and the hurtful science
(‘scientific racism’) that decreed races as inherently superior
and inferior.”
--Nell Painter, Chapter 4, page 64
Scientific
Racism
Phrenology
Physiognomy
Polygenism/Polygenesis/Polygeny
Craniometry
LOUIS AGASSIZ:
“Father of racial science”
Specifically interested in
POLYGENY
American School of Ethnology
(Scientific Racism)
Josiah Clark Notts,
George Robert Gliddon,
Samuel George Morton,
and Louis Agassiz
Peabody Museum of
Harvard University
Louis Agassiz,
by Carleton Watkins
(c. 1874)
Albumen silver print cabinet card
Portraits taken in SC at request of Louis Agassiz (1850):
Delia, country born of African parents,
daughter of Renty, Congo
Drana, country born, daughter of Jack,
Guinea, plantation of BF Taylor, Esq.
Fassena, (carpenter), Mandingo.
Plantation of Col. Wade Hampton, near
Columbia SC
Renty, Congo, Plantation of BF Taylor,
Esq.
Jack (driver), Guinea, Plantation of
B.F.Taylor, Esq. Columbia, SC
Louis Agassiz, by Carleton
Watkins
(c. 1874)
Albumen silver print cabinet card
Jack (driver), Guinea, Pantation of
B.F.Taylor, Esq. Columbia, SC
Daguerreotype
March 1850
Harvard Peabody Museum
“If the very best type of the
European is always
presented, I insist that
justice, in all such works,
demands that the very best
type of Negro should also be
taken. The importance of
this criticism may not be
apparent to all;--to the black
man it is very apparent. He
sees the injustice, and
writhes under its sting.”
Frederick Douglass,
1854
“The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically
Considered: An Address, Before the
Literary Societies of Western Reserve
College, at Commencement, July 12,
1854 “
THOUGHT PICTURES
The “passion for pictures” should be “safely [re]commended to
the Notts and Gliddens who are just now puzzled with the
question as to whether the African slave should be treated as a
man or an ox…man cannot be measured.”
--Frederick Douglass, “Pictures & Progress,” 1861
THOUGHT PICTURES
“This picture making faculty is
…subject to a wild scramble
between contending interests
and forces. It is a mighty
power—and the side to which it
goes has achieved a wondrous
conquest. For the habits we
adopt, the master we obey in
making our subjective nature
objective…is the all important
thing to ourselves and our
surroundings.”
--Frederick Douglass, from
“Pictures and Progress (1861)”
Portraits substituted for a likeness of Harriet Jacobs
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth. Org. taken in
1864 portrait session.
The original cabinet card (6 ½ x
4 ¼ inches) read:
“I Sell the Shadow to
Support the Substance
SOJOURNER TRUTH”
Also, on the back she had
COPYRIGHT printed.
Sojourner Truth. Org. taken in
1864 portrait session.
Note: This is a later version.
Truth did NOT have photo
labels printed in dialect. The
original cabinet card (6 ½ x 4 ¼
inches) read:
Harriet Beecher Stowe, c. 1850
Anna Douglass
Experts in the Field
• Stephen J. Gould, on racist sciences
• Nell Painter, on Sojourner Truth
• Suzanne Schneider, on Agassiz and Zealy
• John Stauffer, on Frederick Douglass & Photography
• Brian Wallis, on Agassiz and Zealy
• Deborah Willis, on African Americans and Photography
• Donna Wells, on Frederick Douglass & Photography
Main theses:
• Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth consciously tried to
control their own public photographic images
• These were acts of resistance
• They focused on self creation and affirmation AND debunked
racist myths
• Struggles for freedom and social justice continue even after legal
emancipation
And as Davis, Vlach, and other scholars inform us, there were
many other forms of resistance as well.