Twelfth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, African Americans in Louisiana were the subjects of three types of portraits – racist political cartoons, plantation postcards, and self-funded studio portraits. All three forms of representations were disseminated widely, on account of the dramatic decrease in the cost and production of photographs since the middle 19th century and the birth of the daguerreotype. While racist political cartoons ridiculed and mocked the newfound freedom of African Americans, plantation postcards depicted African Americans happily toiling in cotton fields and other plantation settings. In contrast, when African Americans designed and sat for their own portraits, they insisted on creating a different narrative, one that showed dignity, survival, resilience, and even respectability. This study compares and contrasts representations of African Americans in photographs in Louisiana, using the archives of the Robert Langmuir Collection of the Stuart A Rose Manuscript and Research Library at Emory University.