Historic Portraits Celebrate the Earliest African American Photographers

1 week ago 18

A daguerreotype portrait of a Black woman holding a young white girl on her lap, both looking toward the camera.

The National Gallery of Art has announced an exhibition that will trace African American photographers and portrait subjects from the earliest days of photography.

The upcoming exhibition titled Remember Me: Picturing African Americans in Early Photography charts the evolving understanding of portrait photography as a tool of representation among African Americans in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

A daguerreotype portrait of a young Black man wearing a dark coat, a plaid vest, and a light-colored bow tie, set in a gold-toned octagonal frame with red velvet lining.

A studio portrait of a woman seated with a young boy and two young girls, all wearing formal mid-19th-century attire, set within an ornate gold-colored frame.

A hand-tinted daguerreotype portrait of a woman wearing a dark cape, a white lace-trimmed bonnet, and jewelry, set within an ornate, rectangular gold-colored frame.

Featuring some 70 works drawn from the National Gallery’s collection, the exhibition traces African American photographers and portrait subjects in daguerrotypes in the nascent days of photography’s development, chronicling the evolution of the medium as a means to define Black community, aspiration, and identity. Unfolding over the course of three thematic sections, the exhibition is arranged chronologically and explores how portrait photography was both embraced as a means of self-empowerment and utilized to exert control over representation.

A cat sits on a cane-seated wooden chair, presented in an oval-framed daguerreotype with an ornate gold border.

A tintype portrait of a young Black soldier in a Union uniform, wearing a forage cap and a belt buckle with the letters "US," framed in an ornate gold oval.

A daguerreotype portrait of a woman in a dark, long-sleeved dress with a white lace collar, seated in a carved wooden chair.

The first section “Black Entrepreneurs” tells the story of James Presley Ball, Glenalvin Goodridge, and Augustus Washington, three leading early African American portrait photographers who established thriving studios soon after the medium was introduced in the United States in the 1840s and 1850s. Ball, Goodridge, and Washington photographed both Black and white clients around the Civil War era. By signing their portraits, which was uncommon among daguerreotypists, they established their authorship of the photographs and highlighted the role of Black entrepreneurship.

The second section “Portraits” explores depictions of African Americans in largely white-owned studios in the years both before and after the Civil War, revealing how photography of the period both reinforced and disrupted stereotypes. Portraits of both free and enslaved men, women, and children on view exemplify the complexities of agency and consent during this time.

A vintage portrait of a young woman with long, dark, wavy hair, wearing a light-colored jacket with a dark lapel, mounted on a card printed with "Fred S. Tisdell, 749 Chapel St., New Haven, Conn.

A group of six Black women posing in front of an American flag, with five dressed as Red Cross nurses and one seated in the center wearing a military-style uniform.

A 1924 studio portrait by James Van Der Zee of a Black couple standing together, the man in a tuxedo holding a top hat and cane, and the woman in a beaded flapper-style dress.

Meanwhile, the final section “Studios” examines the rise of Black-owned studios in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It presents work by renowned studio photographers such as Addison Scurlock and James Van Der Zee, alongside lesser-known artists, such as G. Addison Turner and Daniel Freeman.

Together, these images tell a broader story of how Black Americans used photography to document their lives, define their public image, and preserve their histories across the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Remember Me: Picturing African Americans in Early Photography will be on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington from November 7, 2026, to March 14, 2027.

Read Entire Article