EARLY

PORTRAITURE:
DAGUERREOTYPE
Anne Co, Coco Ligon, Juneth Tena, Rio Salinas
Daguerreotype in Douglass’s
Newspapers
■ Frederick Douglass
- His work as a newspaper editor kept him up-to-date on the latest technological
advances about the daguerreian process
- both feature occasional news about daguerreotype among the exchange
articles and notices that extend the papers’ contents beyond the subject of slavery.
Daguerreotype in Douglass’s
Newspapers
■ North Star Article
- promotes the moral and intellectual improvement of the colored people
■ Douglass’s Paper
- it aimed to ‘‘be the advocate of ‘whatsoever things are true—whatsoever
things are honest—whatsoever things are just—whatsoever things are pure—whatsoever
things are lovely— whatsoever things are of good report.’
Daguerreotype in Douglass’s
Newspapers
■ He reprinted articles featuring the accomplishments of African American
Daguerreotypists
- Augustus Washington’s New York Tribune
- James Presley Ball’s ‘‘Great Daguerrian Gallery of the West’’
■ He also added novels
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin (H.B. Stowe)
- The Heroic Slave
European Portraiture

■ It’s a sense of reality, an apparent intention to depict the unique appearance of a

particular person.
■ most portraits produced in Renaissance and Baroque Europe follow one of a very
small range of conventional formats. The profile view, which was favored in ancient
coins, was frequently adopted in the 15th century.
American Portraiture

■ In early 19th century, artists primarily painted portraits, and some landscapes in a
style based mainly on English painting, but not long they broke from British
traditions.
■ Colonial and Revolutionary art adhered to British cultural norms because colonials
desired to purchase portraiture that mirrored the styles that their contemporaries in
England were purchasing; portraiture was a signifier of one‘s high social position.
■ Eventually, American portrait artists began to sever cultural ties with England.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin

■ In this article, Douglass was reluctant to detail the well-known author’s appearance
with specific reference to daguerreian portraiture.
■ Douglass was convinced that Stowe’s novel had the power to make Americans
support both the free and enslaved blacks and vision specific antislavery and
antiracist reforms.
■ But, Douglass thought in the introduction of the novel, Stowe’s appearance would
disguise her depth of character. In looking more closely, however, we see Stowe’s
‘‘real presence” and that its ‘‘daguerreotype’’ of Stowe reveals more about the
character of the novel than of its author.
The Heroic Slave

■ A northern traveler named listwell, he overhears an apparently spontaneous

soliloquy by Washington, lamenting his enslavement and resolving to achieve
freedom.
■ Moving from contemplation to conversion immediately after his encounter with
Washington, Listwell declares that he claims himself as an abolitionist. He wasn’t
able to see Washington’s face but five years later, after meeting him face to face.
■ The encounter flashed back to him and he said to Washington ‘‘I have seen your
face, and heard your voice before. I am glad to see you. I know all’’
The Heroic Portrait: Daguerreotype in
Douglass’s Fiction
■ In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the readers were able to visualize Tom’s appearance through
the narrative as daguerreotype-in-text.
■ In ‘‘The Heroic Slave,’’ the narrative voice similarly offers the first description of
Washington’s appearance but without explicitly comparing it to any form of
portraiture
■ Uncle Tom’s Cabin calls attention to its own representational work even as it
approximates a mode capable of making Tom seem real, ‘‘The Heroic Slave’’ instead
shows a fictional character who, much like an actual person, is capable of reflecting
on the representational work of his own memory.
The Early Technology of Portraiture
■ Daguerreotype Process by Louis Jacques Daguerre– images that are developed in a
copper plate.
– Developing process involves holding the copper plate over heated mercury.
– Polishing the copper into a mirror-like finish.
Daguerreotypy: The Picture of Progress
■ It was mentioned in the chapter that Frederick Douglass wrote, revisited and
delivered a set of lectures on the subject between 1861 and 1865.
The titles were:
“Lecture on Pictures”
“The Age of Pictures”
“Life Pictures”
“Pictures and Progress”
Visual arts, imagination, humanity, and progress toward liberty and justice were so
interesting and significant to him.
These lectures are about photos which Douglass defines hieroglyphics, photographic
and painted portraits, literary characterization and imaginative thought.
Robert Cornelius (1839)
A Daguerreian Self-portrait

Subject faces the camera so that his full face is

visible
 by Louis Agassiz

The halo of light around the slaves’ (from the Congo tribe) faces against the dark
background and the angle at which the light strikes their faces emphasize the
darkness of their skin tones.
 Frederick Douglass

In Douglass’s daguerreian portraits, his seemingly “reflected” personhood is

produced and enacted through the medium’s unique reflectivity and popular
discussions of its visual effects.
 Frederick Douglass

when a viewer tilts or looks at the original of one of his daguerreian portraits at an
angle, his image reverses from positive to negative and what was dark becomes light
(and vice versa).
 Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass versus “white artists”

Frederick Douglass
■ Frederick Augustus Washington
Bailey

■ Abolitionist, Writer and a

Statesman

■ Escaped slavery on September

3, 1838 from Baltimore to New
York

■ The most photographed

American (160 portraits)
Frederick Douglass Photography
■ He viewed photography as the
most democratic of the arts.

■ It’s a visual legacy that

continues to capture the
American imagination.

■ He associated photography
with freedom

■ He believes photography’s
power to convey truth.
“For Douglass, photography was the life blood of being
able to be seen and caricature, to be represented and
not grotesque, to be seen as fully human and not as an
object or chattel to be brought and sold”

–Celeste-Marie Bernier, co-author of Picturing Frederick Douglass: An

Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographic American
Frederick Douglass: Aesthetics

■ Appearing in front of the dark

■ Single-coloured background

■ Avoided props to focus

attention on his face

■ He always dressed up for the

photographer

■ He never smiled
 “He didn’t want to be portrayed as a happy slave.the
smiling black was to play into the racist caricature.and
his cause of ending slavery and ending racism had the
gravity that required a stern look”

– John Stauffer, co-author of Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated

Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographic American
 “His photographs testify to the sense of suffering and
struggle and to his interest in retaining humanity in the
face of struggle.”

–Celeste-Marie Bernier, co-author of Picturing Frederick Douglass: An

Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographic American
References
https://brewminate.com/why-abolitionist-frederick-douglass-loved-the-photograph/

www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-frederick-douglass-photographed-american-19th-century/amp

http://enhancephotographyskill.blogspot.com/2014/11/what-are-similarities-between.html