Frederick Douglass’s Camera Obscura: Representing the Antislave “Clothed and in Their Own Form”

In October 1923, in his monthly column for The Crisis magazine, W. E. B. Du Bois wondered why more young colored men and women do not take up photography as a career. The average white photographer does not know how to deal with colored skins and having neither sense of the delicate beauty or tone nor will to learn, he makes a horrible botch of portraying them." Du Bois knew whereof he spoke, as both curator and subject. He pioneered the use of photography to introduce "The New Negro" to the world in his American Negro Exhibit of 363 photographs of African American life (masterfully selected for maximum political effect) at the Paris Exposition in 1900. As a trained historian, moreover, Du Bois well understood a simple rule for ensuring one's immortality: stage events of potential historical import and have them photographed, preferably with one's self positioned at the center of the image, which Du Bois so frequently did. Here, Gates examines Frederick Douglass' camera obscura that represents the antislave clothed and in their own form.