United States, 1834–1884
Frederick Douglass
1876
Albumen print photograph, autographed
William H. Brearley Photograph Album
On loan from the University of Michigan Clements Library

After escaping slavery, abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass (1818–
1895) pioneered the idea that photography could create new images
of African Americans, allowing them to regain agency and craft
their likenesses in ways that were formerly impossible. Douglass
recognized that existing photographic representations of African
Americans were often one-sided racist caricatures perpetuated
by their white creators. His “Pictures and Progress” lectures, first
given in 1861, set out his revolutionary visions for photography and
social reform.
In his lifetime, Douglass was photographed more than any other
person in nineteenth-century America. While the images closely
document his curated visual transformations, Douglass unfailingly
presents himself as an honorable and sophisticated subject. Scholar
Henry Louis Gates has called this an unprecedented representation
of a Black man “clothed in his own form.”