Photographs, Race, and Representation

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Mary Eliza Church Terrell, courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

"The rise of photojournalism and the popularity of halftone photographs in the early twentieth century provided suffragists with new publicity opportunities. Women—suffragists and growing numbers of female artists—designed and circulated more visual propaganda. They also produced innovative protests, like parades and pickets, and used halftone photographs to present a vision of political womanhood that Americans had not witnessed before."

Allison K. Lange, "Competing Visual Campaigns" [3]

This collection underlines the importance of photographic portraiture for African American women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Black reformers, such as Mary Church Terrell (depicted left), utilized photography to begin fostering positive public images of women of color. Reimagining the Black female figure in society and politics combatted racist depictions of Black women in popular culture and mass media.

The goal of portraiture for everyday Black women, as well as advocates like Mary Church Terrell, was to replace these negative representations with positive images that showcased their intelligence, integrity, and decency. Photography as positive propaganda allowed for more novel images of Black female reformers to appear for private and public consumption. Recall the caption underneath the image of Sojourner Truth’s carte de visite, which reads: “I sell the Shadow to support the Substance.” Truth used photography to promote herself, advertise her work, and finance her personal and social endeavors. Mary Church Terrell, as an upper class woman of color, used photography to restructure and replace the racist iconography that drove the misunderstanding of Black women in America.

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Darby, Young Woman, Late 19th century

The photographs in this collection contribute to subverting racist stereotypes. Many of the young women photographed are unidentified, and it is unfortunate that their identities are unknown. Despite not knowing the identity of these women, these photographs, along with various others in the Loewentheil Collection, remain as documents of their ability to portray themselves and capture their image as vital to the fabric of American society. The photographs of these unidentified Black women might have been carried by a loved one or shared in a family parlor. Their existence in the archive speaks to the care with which people held these photographs of Black women. 

However, the photos and daguerreotypes chosen for this exhibit are in conversation with each other; the images of these women, and many more in the Loewentheil Collection, articulate the problem of Black exceptionalism and the necessity of representation despite anonymity.

As you explore this collection in the gallery below, consider these questions and more. What do you see within the images? How are the women dressed, and what can their poses say about who these women were? What can these images say about the erasure of Black feminine bodies within the historical and art historical archive? Considering their respective time periods, think about how photography communicated information about its subject to their contemporary audiences, and how that information has translated over time.

Click on each image below to cycle through the gallery, or click here to see all the items on a single page with short descriptions.