Pictures and Progress: Early Photography And The Making Of African-American Identity
“Pictures and Progress offers a new understanding of visual representations of black Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through its compelling essays, this work reframes the archive of images of death, beauty, and suffering of black subjects in photography.”
–Deborah Willis, New York University
PRAISE
“With its emphasis on the often radical roles that black sitters and makers assumed in the history of photography, Pictures and Progress offers a bold approach to the study of American visual culture, one that places black agency at its center. Its intriguing and persuasive essays elucidate the importance of photography to the creation of free, black personhood in the 19th and early-20th centuries and reveal the myriad and sometimes surprising ways that such hands sought to wield “the pencil of nature” in an effort to assert self-possessed, and therefore revolutionary, subjectivities during an era in which the dominant culture preferred to represent them as otherwise.”
“Pictures and Progress offers a new understanding of visual representations of black Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through its compelling essays, this work reframes the archive of images of death, beauty, and suffering of black subjects in photography.”
“I recommend Pictures and Progress for anyone who enjoys reading about the history of photography, African American history, or those who like to consider new ideas about photography as an art form. . . . [O]riginality, fresh ideas and a good pace of content make Pictures and Progress an excellent read.”
“Pictures and Progress is an edited volume of essays that underscores the role of photography in the production of African American identity during the nineteenth and early twentieth century.... Its contributors are skillful scholars from diverse fields who employ a variety of critical practices to call attention to the cultural, social, and political aspects of early African American photography. These authors seek to disrupt the familiarity of photographs – more a means of persuasion than of proof – and emphasize the plurality of photographic practice during the ante- and postbellum periods.... Pictures and Progress is certainly recommended for art libraries that specialize in the history of photography or visual and material culture studies.”
“[A] nuanced collection of essays. . . . that makes a significant contribution to our understanding of African Americans’ uses of photography in public dialogue by and about African Americans in the postemancipation era.”
“Pictures and Progress is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on African American photography. The contributors have painstakingly revisited a moment in time when African Americans considered still-photography liberating.”
“[T]his volume… will appeal equally to historians of photography and of the United States. Together, the essays in this book emphasize the act of thoughtful, visual scrutiny coupled with the desire to use photographs to make sense of a past that has often been overlooked.”