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Home , Louis Agassiz, Pornography

Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz's Slave Author(s): Brian Wallis Reviewed work(s): Source: American Art, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer, 1995), pp. 38-61 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3109184 . Accessed: 29/02/2012 12:18

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http://www.jstor.org BlackBodies, White Science LouisAgassiz's Slave Daguerreotypes

BrianWallis Recentdiscussions of multiculturalism, -through negotiationsfraught ethnicity,identity, and racehave raised with silent conflictsand profound many new questionsabout the natureof implications.For this reason,it is impor- culturaldifference. Some criticshave tant to historicizenot only the conceptof derided"political correctness" and racebut also the institutionsand power- challengesto Westerncanons of culture, knowledgeconjunctions that have while othershave struggled to tracethe fosteredit. genealogiesof culturaloppression and to Museumsare central to the waysour challengenormative structures of identity cultureis constructed.Despite the formation.In its methodology,this attentionthey now pay to spectacleand second groupof criticshas shiftedthe display,museums-like libraries,histori- analysisaway from essentialistor biologi- cal ,and archives-are principally cal versionsof raceby tryingto determine concernedwith sortingand classifying how fluctuantethnic rolesare constructed knowledge.It is significant,then, that and articulatedthrough a varietyof overthe past few decadesa greatsea- positions,languages, institutions, and changehas swept overall these institu- apparatuses.When racehas been sub- tions. In the wake of the jected to the criticalgaze of these prac- boom of the 1970s, informationonce tices, it has inevitablybeen reinscribedas storedin the form of photographsand a complexand discursivecategory that photographicallyillustrated books has cannot be separatedfrom other formative been wrenchedfrom its previousorgani- componentsof identity. zationaland institutionalcontexts and In otherwords, these debateshave reclassifiedaccording to its medium.As made clearthat "race"is a politicalissue, a criticRosalind Krauss has noted, the productof subjectivechoices made effect of this changehas been "to dis- aroundissues of power,a function less of mantlethe photographicarchive-the set physicalrepression than of constructions of practices,institutions, and relationships of knowledge.Who determineswhat to which nineteenth-centuryphotography counts as knowledge?Who representsand belonged-and to reassembleit within "Renty,Congo. Plantationof B. F. who is represented?Whose voice will be the categoriespreviously constituted by Taylor, Esq." Daguerreotypetaken by heard?Whose storieswill be remembered? art and its T. S.C., March history."' J. Zealy, Columbia, Such to the heartof how in recentmuseum exhibitions of 1850. PeabodyMuseum, Harvard questionsgo Thus, University historyis writtenand validatedby daguerreotypes,images once intendedfor

39 American Art i personal,scientific, topographic, medical, at once familiarand utterlystrange. If it is or legalreasons have been reclassified, a shockto see full frontalnudity in early reunitedunder the rulingcategory of the Americanphotography, it is even more "daguerreanaesthetic." Once- surprisingto see it without the trappings cameraoperators have been given names of shameor sexualfantasy. Here, the and accordedthe statusof artists.And seatedwomen calmlyreveal their , worksthat formerlycirculated in file and the standingmen arestark naked. cabinets,desk drawers,family albums, But theirattitudes are detached, and local archiveshave now been dis- unemotional,and workmanlike.In what placedto the autonomous,unifying seemsto be a deliberaterefusal to engage contextof the art museum.If nothing with the cameraor its operator,they stare else, this processproves that theseputa- into the lens, theirfaces like masks,eyes tively objectiverecords are anything but, glazed,jaws clenched. Fascinating and and that the notion of an autonomous disturbing,these picturesraise compelling imageis a fiction. Moreover,this process questionsabout the constructionof-and also suggeststhat the classificatorysystems the socialinvestments in-the categories of nineteenth-centuryobjectivity may of "race,""science," "photography," and have a greatdeal to do with the formation "themuseum." of modernistversions of knowledge.This The daguerreotypes,which were taken dual shift in seeingsuggests that all for Agassizin Columbia,South Carolina, knowledgeis relative,historically situated, in 1850, had two purposes,one nomi- subjectivelyformed and catalogued,and nally scientific,the other franklypolitical. bound to intereststhat its meanings. They were designedto analyzethe But what is signaledby this shift in physicaldifferences between European meaning?How has this reorientationof whites and Africanblacks, but at the same photographicknowledge actually pro- time they weremeant to provethe duced new meaningsand new insights? superiorityof the white race.Agassiz What is the relationshipbetween chang- hoped to use the photographsas evidence ing attitudestoward race and simulta- to provehis theoryof "separatecreation," neous transformationsin museum the idea that the variousraces of mankind collectionpractices? were in fact separatespecies. Though strictlyscientific in purpose,the da- guerreotypestook on a veryparticular LouisAgassiz and RacialTypologies meaningin the contextof prevailing political,economic, and aesthetictheories A particularlyrevelatory case is that of the about race.Thus, they help to discredit so-calledslave daguerreotypes of Louis the verynotion of objectivityand call into Agassiz,discovered at Harvard'sPeabody questionthe supposedtransparency of the Museumin 1975 and justifiably photographicrecord. celebratedin the exhibition"Nineteenth- The classificatoryproject that led to Century Photography" organized by the the production of the slave daguerreotypes Amon Carter Museum in 1992. This was something of a departure for Agassiz, extraordinaryseries consists of fifteen who, in 1850, was the most famous highly detailed images on silver scientist in America (fig. 1).3 Before plates, which show front coming to the , he had and side views of seven southern slaves, shown no interest in the growing Ameri- men and women, largely naked.2The can debates over or the division of individuals sit or stand facing the mankind into separate species. Born in with a directness and forthrightness that is , Agassiz (1807-1873) had

40 Summer 1995 twenty-two, Agassiz published his first scientific treatise, a mammoth, ground- breaking study of the fish of . This volume consisted of the meticulous drawing, classification, and ordering of more than five hundred species of fish found principally along the Amazon River. Continuing his studies of fish, in 1830 Agassiz published the comprehensive catalogue Fresh WaterFishes of Central Europe and, from 1833 to 1844, the

Such questionsgo to the heart of how history is written and validated by society-through negotiationsfraught with -. silent conflicts andprofound ;:';?i:i::(:::: ~:- :; ::::;::;-: ::::::;:: -. implications. /: u;.:::::_::-:--_ _?i:-,l I:i;-::--:::::;:??:B i ---iii:i ::::::::::::: iri:-- i: i::':':l:i-g~~::il;:~~:~i;-:::':-~i.~~I -~?;::~~:::-, ?~ca~~~~s ---- '; ; : : --"-:i:l:i:81~1: :'"-c:I:.:1~9_ i::-:a? ::;::ii~:::-:~:::::::::~~I`:~~~~ :::BAOe-:li-P :i::-:::::;i_;: i':--'iiiei~~:;i::::~: - :;i::-::::' Researchon Fossil - . ?:-?";::'::; multipart publication :i:,::::-:::: Fish. Previous to this project, only eight : r :I:i:::::iir:gi,~ generic types of fossil fish had been f::::: ~!:IS~~yg":"~:~ijl:::::::?~~l identified; Agassiz's five-volume work -r';;::ii~ ;:?::: -i:-i:;: :; more than 340 new :::::::~ catalogued genera. The methodology Agassiz used was ..; ..-:::,:I:::: ::_:;:;-::- ; : --- :::i::i::ii--:::::::--:i: ; : :it~ comparative and relational: individual images or specimens held far less meaning for him than the cumulative consequence 'Ls of a series ordered. and ii-i:::::::::Z:~i properly Sorting classifying were the bases of Agassiz's method. As a result, he was one of the principal collectors and archivists of CarletonWatkins, portrait of achieved his first success in Paris as the specimens in the nine- ProfessorLouis ca. 1874. Agassiz, star student of the legendary Baron teenth In the United States, he Albumensilver cabinetcard, century. print the of 14.9 x 5.1 cm (5 7/ x 4 in.). , leading zoologist founded prominent natural history CaliforniaHistorical Society, San his day and the founder of the modern museums in Charleston, South Carolina, Francisco science of . Cuvier and Cambridge, , and was so impressed with Agassiz that he established the fundamental rules for turned over to him his own research on cataloguing and classifying. Indeed, fossil fish. In 1829, when he was just the modern museum combines two

41 American Art 2 Detail of LouisAgassiz's nineteenth-century traditions-the . This theory,called "Tableau"to accompanyhis schemes of and the asserted from a introductionto Nott and organization Agassiz , origin single Josiah of P. T. Barnum. source.Racial wereex- GeorgeGliddon, Typesof showmanship discrepancies Mankind(Philadelphia: Lippincott, When he emigrated to the United plainedby subscribingto one of two Grambo& Co., 1854) States in December 1846 to take a post at views:one, the environmentalist,which , Agassiz's first stop said that separateraces evolved into was in Philadelphia to see "the American differentbody typesand skin pigmenta- Golgotha," the famous skull collection of tion becauseof climate,locale, and other Dr. Samuel Morton. An eminent physi- physicaleffects; and two, miscegenist, cian and anatomist, Morton had recently which held that separateraces were the published two skull compendia, Crania resultof intermarriage.But it was poly- Americana (1839) and Crania Aegyptiaca genesis,the theoryof multiple,separate (1844), works that had profound influ- creationsfor each raceas distinctspecies, that becamethe hallmarkof the American School of Ethnology.For a brieftime around1850, the Americantheory of with Morton as its Worksthat formerly circulated in polygenesis, leader, enjoyedwide credencein international file cabinets, desk drawers,fam- scientificcircles. ily albums, and local archives Whetheror not Morton and Agassiz discussedracial at theirfirst have now been to the theory displaced meetingis unclear.Until that point, autonomous, unifying context of Agassizhad shown little interestin racial the art museum. typologiesand had not yet embracedthe theoryof separatecreation. He was impressedby the skulls,though. For a collectorlike Agassiz,the effectwas dramatic,and he wrote to his motherat ence on the understanding of race in once: "Imaginea seriesof 600 skulls,most America. Morton's first book collected of Indiansfrom all tribeswho inhabitor data on the shape and capacity of the once inhabitedNorth America.Nothing skulls of various North American types, like it existsanywhere else. This collec- classified as white, Indian, Eskimo, and tion, by itself, is worth a trip to America." in the sameletter to his Negro. Judging that the ancient skulls he However, mother, had collected from Indian burials and Agassizrecorded another event that may other sites did not differ markedly from haveeither reflected his conversations modern skulls of the same race, Morton with Morton or simplyjolted him into a concluded that the races always had the confrontationwith the issueof race.He his for the first time same physical and mental characteristics. wrote of encounter, In other words, he believed that racial in his life, with a blackman: factors were static rather than - ary. Moreover, from a comparison among All the domesticsin my hotel were men of skulls, Morton deduced that the races of color. Ican scarcelyexpress to you the mankind had been separately created as painful impressionthat I received,especially distinct and unequal species (fig. 2).4 since thefeeling that they inspiredin me is Prior scientific theory about evolution contraryto all our ideas about the confrater- was almost universally creationist; that is, nity of the human typeand the unique it conformed to the Bible in its belief in origin of our species... . Nonetheless,it is the unity of all peoples as descendants of impossiblefor me to repressthe feeling that

42 Summer 1995 ~~~~~~~~ . i

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they are not of the same blood as us. In see- large curvednails, and especiallythe livid ing their blackfaces with their thick lips color of theirpalms, I could not take my eyes and grimacing teeth, the wool on their head, off theirface in orderto tell them to stayfar their bent knees, their elongatedhands, their away.5

43 American Art Despite his personalrepugnance for the originatedand evolvedin uniqueways. blackshe encountered,Agassiz later Regardingslavery, Agassiz tried specifi- claimedthat his beliefson racialtypologies callyto divorcehimself from any political werewithout politicalmotivation, and he implications(or intentions)of his project: remaineda staunchabolitionist, a position that seemscontradictory given the later Wedisclaim, however, all connectionwith proslaveryembrace of his views. Morton, a any questioninvolvingpolitical matters. It is Quaker,also arguedfor disinterested simplywith reference tothe possibility of science,although his assertion,in Crania appreciatingthe differences existing between Aegyptiaca,that ancientEgyptians were not differentmen, and of eventuallydetermin- blackand in fact had employedblacks as ing whetherthey have originated all overthe theirslaves seemed to supportAmerican worldand underwhat circumstances, that slavery.But clearly,highly subjective we havetried to tracesome facts representing politicaland aestheticdecisions governed the humanraces.7 the developmentof polygenesis,particu- larlyamong southern scientists determined Yet, followinghis visit to Charlestonin to provethe inferiorityof African-Ameri- March 1850, Agassizwas motivatedto can slavesin the decadesbefore the Civil gatherspecific evidence for his theoryin War. relationto Africans.That Agassizwould This "scientific"issue came to a head at employscience in a projectthat implicitly the third meetingof the AmericanAssocia- supportedthe southernview of slaveryis tion for the Advancementof Scienceheld significantbecause it demonstrateshow in Charlestonin March 1850. The central the pose of disinterestedempiricism theme of the conferencewas the question actuallyfortified preexisting, though of the unity or diversityof species,and the unstated,political views. Even the mode featuredspeaker was Agassiz. His com- of statisticalanalysis had an ideological ments to the Charlestonaudience, his first basischaracteristic of increasingmodern- publicstatement regarding separate ization.The maniafor the collectionand creation,were circumspect. But he made it quantificationof naturalspecimens clearthat he sidedwith the southernview coincidedwith otherstatistical projects, of polygenesisand acceptedthe inferior such as the beginningof the annual statusof blacks.The variousraces of census,statistics for crimeand health,and mankind,he stated,were "wellmarked and the mappingand surveyingof new lands, distinct"and did not originate"from a exemplifyinga new way of seeingthe common center... nor a common pair."' world.8Certainly, such scientificenu- This statementelicited a firestormof merationsreduced individuals to statistics controversywith the conservativeclergy in and involveddepersonalization, but, its his hometownof , and Agassizwas proponentsargued, modern quantifica- obligedto makehis positionson Christian- tion would improvesocial organization by ity and abolitionismclear in threelong helpingto cataloguethe needs of citizens. articles published in the ChristianExam- In attempting to organize his data iner. In these, Agassiz stressed that his regardingAfricans, Agassiz sought views regarding separate creation did not firsthand evidence. Since the importation contradict the biblical notion of a unified of Africans had been outlawed in 1808, human origin. Rather, he argued, the Bible Agassiz was doubtful about finding "pure" referredonly to the Caucasian inhabitants examples of the race in America. But Dr. of one portion of the globe; Negroes, Robert W. Gibbes, who had given two Indians, Hindus, and the other "species" papers in Charleston, encouraged Agassiz he identified inhabited different and to visit the plantations around Columbia. discrete geographical regions, having Gibbes, the son of a prominent South

44 Summer 1995 Carolinafamily, was a close friendof Paris,had proposedthe establishmentof a many of the leadingplantation owners, museumof photographsof the racesof includingsuch familiesas the Hamptons, mankind.And, in 1845, a French the Hammonds,and the Taylors.He was daguerreotypistnamed E. Thiessonhad also Columbia'sforemost authority on taken studiesof Braziliansand Portuguese scienceand culture.He was a nationally Africansin Lisbon.12But therewas no recognizedexpert on Americanpaleontol- precedentin Americafor the type of ogy and, like Agassiz,an obsessivecollec- photographiccollection that Agassiz of scientificspecimens.' soughtto build. WhateverAgassiz may havethought In a letterto Morton, Gibbesexplained about the racialstatus of Africansas he that duringa tour of plantationsaround wrote out his lecturesin Boston, his attitudewas radicallytransformed once he witnessedthe real-lifesituation of African- Americanslaves in Columbia,South [The to Carolina.There, he encountereda tiny daguerreotypes]help casteof aristocraticwhite slaveowners discredit the very notion of objec- who commandedvast plantations(Wade and call into the alonewas more than tivity question Hampton's eighteen the thousandacres) and as many as supposed transparencyof threethousand slaves. In 1850, the white photographic record. populationof Columbiawas just oversix thousand,whereas the slavepopulation was in excessof a hundredthousand. Given this huge disparity,upcountry plantationowners were justifiably fearful Columbia,Agassiz had selectedvarious of slaveuprisings and used a varietyof slavesto be photographed:"Agassiz was fear-inducingtactics to insuredocility. delightedwith his examinationof Ebo, Thus, if attitudestoward slaves were more Foulah,Gullah, Guinea, Coromantee, tolerant,even paternalistic,in Massachu- Mandrigoand Congo Negroes.He found setts or even Virginia,in South Carolina enough to satisfyhim that they have disciplinewas deemednecessary, and the differencesfrom the other races."After need for disciplineseemed to encourage Agassizdeparted, Gibbes had the slaves an attitudeof contempttoward slaves.10 broughtto the local daguerreotypist, How Agassizhit upon the idea of JosephT. Zealy,and photographed. photographingthe slavesis not fully Gibbescarefully recorded the names, known. The idea may have come from Africanorigins, and currentownership of Morton, who had givenAgassiz a da- the slaves.In June 1850, Gibbeswrote to guerreotypeof a young Africanboy he Morton, saying,"I havejust finishedthe had exhibitedbefore the Academyof daguerreotypesfor Agassizof native Natural Sciences in Philadelphia."11Or Africans of various tribes. I wish you Agassiz may have been familiar with could see them."13 various calls in contemporary European The fifteen daguerreotypes are divided scientific journals for the creation of a into two series. The first consists of photographic archive of human speci- standing, fully nude images showing mens, or types. For instance, Agassiz's front, side, and rear views. This practice colleague ltienne-Reynaud-Augustin reflected a physiognomic approach, an Serres, a professor of comparative attempt to record body shape, propor- anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes and the tions, and posture. Two slaves were president of the Academy of Sciences in photographed in this manner-Alfred

45 American Art Jack's American-born daughter who lived on the Taylor estate; Renty (figs. 12, 13), from the Congo tribe, who also worked at Taylor's estate; Delia (figs. 14, 15), Renty's American-born daughter, who also lived on the Taylor estate; and Fassena (figs. 16, 17), from the Mandingo tribe, a carpenter at the plantation of Wade Hampton II.

Typological Systems

The efforts by Gibbes and Agassiz to 3, 4 "Alfred, Foulah, belonging to (side and back views; figs. 3, 4), from the systematize the slave daguerreotypes I. S.C." Lomas, Columbia, Foulah tribe before his enslavement to I. represent an early attempt not only to takenby J. T. Daguerreotype Lomas; and side, and back to but Zealy,Columbia, S.C., March Jem (front, apply photography anthropology, 1850. PeabodyMuseum, Harvard views; figs. 5-7), from the Gullah and also to form a coherent photographic University now the property of F. W. Green. The archive. As critic Allan Sekula has pointed second series was more tightly focused, out in his landmark article "The Body showing the heads and naked torsos of and the Archive," almost from its incep- three men and two women. This series tion the was perceived as a adhered to a phrenological approach, form of currency within a closed system. emphasizing the characterand shape of As currency, the photograph ascribed the head. The daguerreotypes include value by both quantifying things and front and side views of five slaves:Jack placing them in a circulating system that (figs. 8, 9), from the Guinea tribe, a slave emphasized their similarity to or differ- driver on Edgehill, the plantation of ence from other things. This system, Benjamin F. Taylor; Drana (figs. 10, 11), generally perceived as an archive, attempts

46 Summer 1995 5-7 "Jem, Gullah, belonging to F. N. Green." Daguerreotype takenby J. T. Zealy, Columbia, S.C., March 1850. Peabody Museum, HarvardUniversity

to give coherenceand meaningto seem- ingly randomcomponents. Every photo- graph,Sekula says, takes its placein a "shadowarchive," that ultimate,imagi- naryranking and organizingof informa- tion impliedby the very selectiveand classificatorynature of photography.14 In fact, primitivearchival systems were immediatelycharacteristic of the daguerreanera. The "shadowarchive" of earlyphotographs can be dividedalong two generalorganizational principles- the laterallyorganized catalogue or the verticallyorganized genealogy. The catalogueattempted to establishsimilarity or differenceacross a spatialdimension. This concept thus includedgroup por- traits,panoramic views, and collectionsof portraitsof famouspeople. The geneal- ogy, on the other hand, assembled likenessor diversityacross time. This hierarchical ordering."5Individual images categoryembraced family were linked comparatively and organized (often assembledin framesor, later,in dichotomously, thus creating and enforc- albums),postmortem or memorial ing divisions between self and other, photographs,records of changingscenes, healthy and diseased, normal and patho- or changesin an individualover time. logical. Strengthened by the seeming Within the "shadowarchive," both of transparencyof photographic realism, these systemsfor organizingphotographs these categories and the divisions between -and they often overlapped-implied a them soon took on the authority of

47 AmericanArt trajectories of power and desire, mastery and projection, self and other that triangulate the visual field and govern reception. By supplying an overabundance of information, photography confuses and problematizes its message; it creates what author Roland Barthes calls a "reality effect," a semblance of realism bound to detail. In nineteenth-century parlance, two technical words gained a certain currency to describe how "reality"was construed: the word daguerreotypewas distinguished from the word stereotype.'6 8, 9 "Jack (driver), Guinea. Plantation natural "facts."Supplying either too Stereotypes were originally molds for of B. F. Columbia, Taylor, Esq., much or too little information, photo- creating multiple copies of printing type; S.C." takenby J. Daguerreotype soon muddied the distinctions the came to connote T. Zealy, Columbia,S.C., March graphs easy word, therefore, 1850. PeabodyMuseum, Harvard between subjective knowledge and what generalized replication. The daguerreo- University was called "objective." Owing to its type, on the other hand, was characterized indexical properties-that is, that a by miniaturization, infinitesimal preci- photograph retains a "trace"of an actual sion, and detail. These contrasting existence, as does, say, a footprint- characteristics-the general category and photography seemed to be entirely the specific case-are precisely those poles objective. But the very literalness of that govern the logic of the archive. photographs produces an uncontrollable The early ethnographic research multiplication of meanings in even the conducted by Morton, Agassiz, and other most banal images. And the equally members of the American School of complex acts of taking, reading, or Ethnology depended on the collapse of organizing photographs animate all the the specific and the generic into "type."

48 Summer 1995 10, 11 (overleaf top left) "Drana, The type representedan averageexample outward markings received wide circula- country born, daughter of Jack an tion in Guinea. Plantation of B. F. of a racialgroup, abstraction,though mid-nineteenth-century popular Branded Hand and Taylor, Esq." Daguerreotypetaken not necessarilythe ideal,that definedthe culture-the (1844) by J. T. Zealy, Columbia,S.C., generalform or characterof individuals the Scourged Back (1863), showing, March 1850. Museum, Peabody within the it subsumedindividual- respectively, a punished slave liberator HarvardUniversity group; ity. As HerbertH. Odom explains,"The and a slave's lash-scarredback (figs. 12, 13 (overleafbottom left) "Renty, term typeroughly implies that the ob- 18, 19).18 Congo. Plantation of B. F. served, disordered depended on the taken apparently phenomena Typological systems Taylor, Esq." Daguerreotype arebest as deviationsfrom interest in the by J. T. Zealy, Columbia,S.C., explained widespread contemporary March 1850. PeabodyMuseum, certaindeterminate norms .... The body, especially the head. Silhouettes, HarvardUniversity function of classificationis then to decide portrait daguerreotypes, and phrenology which observedcreature be consid- all directed attention to the shape, 14, 15 (overleaftop right)"Delia, may special country born of African parents, ered as deviationsfrom each set norm size, or characterof the head as a record of daughter of Renty, Congo." and, of course, how many norms exist.""17 individuality. The polygenesists, by taken T. Daguerreotype by J. Zealy, the contrast, were interested in Columbia,S.C., March 1850. Photographystrengthened seeming defining PeabodyMuseum, Harvard realityof the type by objectifyingthe University individualand by using propsand other detailsto accentuatethe "truth"of the 16, 17 (overleafbottom right) "Fassena (carpenter), Mandingo. depiction.Typological photographs- The veryliteralness ofphoto- Plantation of Col. Wade those that became in particularly popular an uncontrol- Hampton, near Columbia, the 1860s and 1870s-were assumedto graphsproduces S.C." T. Daguerreotypetaken by J. be self-evident,to for themselves, lable Zealy, Columbia,S.C., March speak multiplication of meanings 1850. Museum,Harvard and, at the same time, to be Peabody generic. in even the most banal images. University Typically,natives were identifiedonly by theircountry, tribe, or some other generic label (for example,"A Burmese Beauty"). Anotherfeature of type classification and the typologicalphotograph was the separate racial types. Their charts, derived emphasison externalappearance, on the from phrenological models, often showed measurementand observationof the crude rankings from the primate head to human form (that is, the skeletonsand the African to the classical Greek (fig. 20). skulls),rather than on culturalforms. This thinly disguised was also This practiceconformed to Agassiz's reflected in their field research,which method as well. He had workedprinci- involved not only the physical measure- pallywith fossilsand other "hard" ment of the body, but an assessment of evidenceto determinehis classificationof the moral , manner, and social fish types.This objectifyingmethod was habits of each racial type. For instance, alliedwith physiognomyand phrenology, Morton wrote that the African Hottentots the early-nineteenth-centurysciences that were the "nearestapproximation to the analyzedthe exteriorform of the human lower .... Their complexion is body in an attempt to understand connec- yellowish brown, compared by travelersto tions between different human groups as the peculiar hue of Europeans in the last well as the inner workings of the mind stages of jaundice. . . . The women are and spirit. As Agassiz said, "The material represented as even more repulsive in form is the cover of the spirit"; this he appearance than the men.""' Needless to regarded as "fundamental and self- say, such observations were often casual evident." The discourse on slavery and and rarely dependent on what would abolitionism was typified by such external today be called fieldwork. But as scientific views of the body. Two images keyed to description, such views were legitimized.

49 AmericanArt .... B 18 Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes, Captain JonathanW Walker'sBranded Hand, 1845. Sixth platedaguerre- otype, 6.2 x 8.3 cm (23/4x 3 1/4in.). MassachusettsHistorical Society, Boston

The constructionof racialtypes, their comparison, had been handicapped by rankingin a hierarchyof intellect,and the their own physical appearance, "which analysisof the meaningof theirphysiog- lacked the features that could stimulate nomy in the generalscheme of things all the artist through an ideal of higher requiredthe presenceof a . beauty."20 Althoughthese scientists argued that their This aesthetic standard underlay every studieswere madewithout prejudiceor classificatory system in the polygenetic without models,there is ampleevidence program, guaranteeing that the races that a standardwas in placeto character- would be considered not only separate but ize the Caucasianideal. As historian unequal. The embodiment of the classical GeorgeMosse has argued,this view ideal in America, the standard against emergedfrom the appropriationby which all the derogatory images of African prerevolutionaryEnlightenment anthro- Americans were judged, was the neoclassi- pology of the classicistidealism of cal statue in white marble, typified by JohannJoachim Winckelmann, best Hiram Powers's GreekSlave (fig. 21). rememberedas the founderof art history. Various versions of this life-size standing Winckelmannargued that the "physical nude sculpture, ostensibly representing a beautyof the ancientGreeks accounted modern Greek woman captured by Turks, for the excellenceof theirart." The were wildly popular among American ancientEgyptians and Africans,by audiences from the time of its creation in

52 Summer1995 the slight chains on the GreekSlave's wrists only accentuated the work's mildly erotic and highly sentimentalized view of slavery and the body. But the irony that the of purity and ideal beauty is depicted as a slave was not lost on the sculpture's earliest audiences, and the statue was embraced by the abolitionist cause. More pointed, however, was the cartoon in Punch that depicted the anti- ideal-an image of a black slave on a pedestal (fig. 22).21 In nineteenth-century anthropology, blacks were often situated along the evolutionary ladder midway between a classical ideal and the orangutan. From these pseudoscientific studies a Negro type emerged that was highly distorted and almost unique to ethnographic illustration. In comparing various skulls, taxonomists often relied on the device of the angle. This technique, invented by the eighteenth-century Dutch taxonomist Peter Camper, involved the systematic evaluation of the profile measurement from the tip of the forehead to the greatest protrusion of the lips. For Camper and others, the mathematical capability of scientifically classifying such information offered a new tool for the investigation of evolution, or linear development. Camper described his project: "I observed that a line drawn along the forehead and upper lip indi- cated a difference in national physiog- nomy.... When I made these lines incline forwards, I obtained the face of an antique; backwards of a negroe; still more backwards, the lines which mark an ape, a dog, a snipe, &c."22Representations of the facial angle of the Negro skull almost always showed an abnormally pronounced brow, protruding lips and teeth, and a 19 McAllister & Brothers, The 1844 until its triumph at the London back-sloping forehead. Curiously, these Back, 1863. Albumen Scourged Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851. Critics "scientific"representations preceded most silverprint carte-de-visite.Collection of Nicholas M. Graver praised its chaste purity and its classical of the more familiar stereotypes and proportions; male and female viewers derogatory images of African Americans swooned. Rather than suggesting violence, in popular culture. The popular images

53 AmericanArt built on the scientific ones and enhanced features.23The case of the or exaggerated distortions of the black Venus marked the collapse of scientific body. The subject's clothes were often investigation of the racial other into the shown torn, partially removed, or missing realm of the pornographic. This sort of altogether; the body itself was often elision of the exotic and the sexually illicit shown being whipped, beaten, hung, explains in part the mid-nineteenth- pierced, bitten, branded, or otherwise century fascination with distorting the subjugated to a white oppressor. More- features of blacks in popular representa- over, many of the exposed and attacked tions. In many texts (including Agassiz's bodies were shown in explicitly erotic letter to his mother), blacks were made poses, raising the question of how these not only -like or simian, but also largely proslaveryimages functioned as a vulgar and overtly seductive. type of . It is perhaps not coincidental that by their unprecedented , the slave The Type and the Portrait

Given this history of the distortions wrought by typologies, it is particularly ironic that historian Alan Trachtenberg, This aesthetic standard underlay in writing of the Agassiz slave daguerreo- in the types, refers to them as portraits and even every classificatorysystem likens them to classical Roman busts.24 polygeneticprogram. Here, it is necessary to draw the funda- mental distinctions between the type and the portrait. Formally, the type discour- ages style and composition, seeking to daguerreotypes intersect with pornogra- present the information as plainly and phy, that other regime of photography so straightforwardlyas possible. Thus, the central to the 1850s (at least in Europe) images are frequently organized around a and so exclusively concerned with the clear central axis with a minimum of representation of the tactile surface of the external information that could distract human body. While there is no absolute from the principal focus. Since objectivity connection between photographs of the is the goal, the typological image appears nude body and pornography, the vaguely to have no author. (In the case of the slave eroticized nature of the slave daguerreo- daguerreotypes, authorship is irrelevant, types derives from the unwavering, though it clearly pertains more to Agassiz voyeuristic manner with which they than to the photographer Zealy.) And, indiscriminately survey the bodies of the finally, the type is clearly situated within a Africans, irrespective of the subjects' lives. system that denies its subject even as it Agassiz was undoubtedly influenced in establishes overt relations between its this regard by his great mentor, Baron mute subjects. The emphasis on the body Cuvier, who took a particular-if not occurs at the expense of speech; the perverse-interest in the Hottentot subject as already positioned, known, Venus, an African woman who was owned, represented, spoken for, or exhibited naked as a curiosity in Europe constructed as silent; in short, it is because of her unusually prominent ignored. In other words, the typological posterior. After her death, Cuvier con- photograph is a form of representational ducted an autopsy of her body and colonialism. Fundamentally nonre- published a text about its distinguishing ciprocal, it masks its subjective distortions

54 Summer 1995 Fia. 839. Ri. 846.5R -Apolle BevWldereS

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ho.. 847.s4 Fio. 341. Negro•pe

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20 Pagesfrom Nott and Gliddon, in the guise of logic and organization. Its personhood,a fact underlinedby legal TypesofMankind (1854) formations are deformations. and socialstructures as well. Further,the The portrait, on the other hand, is of portraitsignaled an individual'splace in value principally because of the viewer's society,which explainswhy so many relationship to the sitter, the ability to daguerreotypesfeature sitters posed with recognize the subject when he or she is the tools of theirtrade or other attributes. absent. In this sense, the portrait is like a As Sekulamakes clear, "Every portrait caricature that accents the telling features implicitlytook its placewithin a social of an individual. Generally, the nine- and moralhierarchy. The privatemoment teenth-century photographic portrait was of sentimentalindividuation, the look at designed to affirm or underscore the the frozengaze-of-the-loved-one, was white middle-class individual's right to shadowedby two othermore public looks:

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21 HiramPowers, Greek Slave, a look up, at one's 'betters,'and a look the slavedaguerreotypes and a slightly x 1869. Marble,11.7 35.5 x down, at one's 'inferiors."'25Few slaves, earlierproject (ca. 1846) by Mathew 34.2 cm (44 x 14 x 13 1/2 in.). NationalMuseum of American however,had the luxuryof projectingany Bradyto recordimages of inmatesat Art, SmithsonianInstitution, look at all. That slaveswere denied mentalinstitutions.26 These images,now Gift of Mrs. BenjaminH. individualidentity in the antebellum lost, arepreserved in the line Warder engravings South is merelyunderscored by the near- publishedas illustrations(fig. 23) to the 22 "TheVirginian Slave, Intended total absenceof photographsdepicting Americanedition of Marmaduke as a Companionto Powers' them. Sampson'sRationale of Crime(1846), 'GreekSlave."' Engraving This processof socialranking was most edited by penal reformerEliza Farnham. publishedin Punch20 (1851): 236 apparentin the work of earlycriminolo- Brady'simages fortified Farnham's gists, ethnologists,and medicalphotogra- argumentthat criminalsand cretinscould phers.In such fields, it was necessaryto be recognizedby theiroutward appear- constructa standard,or mean, to establish ance, that the markof deviancewas devianceand thus identifyand isolatethe presumedto be emblazonedacross the ultimatethreat to the ideal.Trachtenberg head and body like a stigmata.With the has astutelynoted the similaritybetween riseof urbanismand industrializationin

56 Summer1995 the mid-nineteenth century, such typo- ing its sources onto the oppressed. Any logical readings were deemed practical to investigation of representations of African- protect oneself from strangers by immedi- American blackness, then, must actually ately assessing their character. take a critical look at Euro-American This process of identifying another whiteness to understand the construction person by superficial physical characteris- of race as a category. As critic Coco Fusco tics structured the logic of racial classifica- has insisted, "To ignore white ethnicity is tion. Surprisingly, such distinctions did to redouble its hegemony by naturalizing not really exist before the nineteenth it."29In this regard, it is crucial to under- century. To be sure, various forms of stand the arsenal of institutional means prejudice and subjugation had existed in geared toward the enforcement of white many societies, but prior to 1800, none of male superiority. Photography, typologies, the variety of discriminatory terms and archives, and museums serve as disciplinary attitudes employed were based on race. structures, socially constructed means of Racism, as it emerged in the early nine- defining and regulating difference. teenth century, was a heavily encoded and Like all representations of difference, naturalized belief that racial characteristics Louis Agassiz's slave daguerreotypes exploit the familiar ethnographic convention of introducing the comfortable white viewer to that which is not only exotic and safely The typologicalphotographis a distant, but also generally and deliberately form of representationalcolo- invisible. But not all designations of difference are the same. As Frederick nialism. Fundamentally Douglass noted in a review of the work of nonreciprocal it masks its sub- the American School of Ethnology in 1854: jective distortions in the guise of and Its logic organization. for- It isfashionable now, in our land, to exagger- mations are deformations. ate the differencesbetween the negroand the European.If for instance, a phrenologistor naturalist undertakesto representin portraits, the differencebetween the two races-the and behaviors were grounded in biology negroand the European-he will invariably and conformed to a qualitative hierar- present the highest typeof the European,and as historian M. the lowest the the chy.27But, George type of negro. .... If very Fredrickson has argued, "for its full best type of the Europeanis alwayspresented, growth, intellectual and ideological, I insist that justice, in all such works, racism required a body of 'scientific' and demands that the very best type of the negro cultural thought which would give should be taken. The importanceof this credence to the notion that the blacks criticism may not be apparentto all;--to the were for unalterable reasons of race, mor- black man it is veryapparent.30 ally and intellectually inferior to whites."28 Agassiz's slave photographs constitute a As Douglass so pointedly noted, the perfect example of the conjunction of meaning of representations is governed not scientific and cultural thought in the only by who makes the image but also by formation of racist ideology. who looks. If this view accords with much In attempting to understand the recent critical theory that acknowledges the origins of racism, it is important to avoid role of the observer in constructing knowl- removing it to a historical past or displac- edge, it also points to the part that muse-

57 AmericanArt 23 "S. S., a vagrant,formerly a prize- fightersent to the StatePrison for five for assaultand A years battery, PI'ENID)IX 157 with intent to kill."Engraving by TudorHorton, after lost daguerreo- typeby Mathew Brady, ca. 1846. Publishedin MarmadukeSampson, Rationaleof Crime,ed. Eliza Farnham (New York:Appleton's, 1846)

S. S. is a vagrant, and inmate of what is termed the Luna. House, on Blackwell's Island. He is an Irishman; was for- merly a prize-fightei'; was sent to the State Prison for five years for assault and battery, with intent to kill, and since his liberation, a period of some six or eight years, has spent most of his time in the city and county prisons of New-York. Be- fore his mind became deranged, lie exhibited great energy of passion and purpose, but they were all of a low character, their sole bearing being to prove his own superiority as an animal. He was both vain and selfish. The drawing shows a broad, low head, corresponding with such a character. The moral organs are exceedingly deficient, especially benevolence, and thle intellect only moderately devel- oped. The whole organization, indeed, indicates a total want of every thing like refined and elevated sentiment. If the higher capacities and endowments of humanity were ever found coupled with such a head as this, it would be a phe- nomenon as inexplicable as that of seeing without the eye, or hearing without the ear.

ums and archives play in fixing meanings. practices and to recognize that their By adhering to immutable versions of versions of history are not absolute. Such historical truth, such institutions structure critical methods will help foster multiplic- information according to ideologically ity, subjectivity, and relativity in the inflected principles. But rather than construction of histories. dismissing or rejecting these institutions, In the case of the slave daguerreotypes, it is important to critically examine their this suggests that their meaning extends

58 Summer 1995 24 Carrie Mae Weems, Sea Island well beyondthe empiricalproof that that combinedtexts, narratives,photo- Series, 1992. Three color prints:two Louis different- and the 50.8 cm in diameter in Agassizsought. Quite graphs, plates.Among images panels, (20 in. but no less valid-histories and into Weems'sworks were diameter),one panel,40.6 x 50.8 cm personal incorporated (16 x 20 in.). P.P.O.W., New York meaningscan be connectedwith these old picturesof severalslaves who had images.If colonialismand ethnographic come fromAfrica-reproductions of exploitationdepend on appropriation, Agassiz'sslave daguerreotypes (fig. 24).31 one must acknowledgethat what is taken She did not alteror transformthe images; can alwaysbe takenback. In 1991, for she only selected,enlarged, and example,the African-Americanartist and recontextualizedthem. By placingthem photographerCarrie Mae Weems jour- besidepictures of remnantsof the African neyed to the Sea Islandsoff the coastof culturethe Gullahbrought to America, South Carolinato recordthe remnantsof Weemsviewed their lives empathetically the cultureof the Gullah,the survivorsof from a blackpoint of view. She saw these slavesfrom Africa. Weems photographed men and women not as representativesof brickshelters and other survivingrecords some typologybut as living, breathing of the Gullah,producing a seriesof works ancestors.She made them portraits.

59 AmericanArt Notes

1 RosalindKrauss, "Photography's 7 Agassiz,"The Diversity of Origin of the an ante-room,for the properadjustment DiscursiveSpaces," Art Journal 42 Human Races,"Christian Examiner 49 of toilette,etc., by his visitors.It is (winter1982): 311-19. See also Douglas (1850): 113. magnificentlylighted, having, besides Crimp,"The Museum's Old/The numerouswindows, a largeskylight Library'sNew Subject,"Parachute 22 8 See JonathanCrary, Techniques of the adjustedand constructedfor the purposes (spring1981): 32-37; and Allan Sekula, Observer:On Visionand Modernityin the of his art, andwill undoubtedlyinsure a "DismantlingModernism, Reinventing NineteenthCentury (Cambridge, Mass.: most perfectfinish to his pictures." Documentary(Notes on the Politicsof MIT Press,1990). PhotographicArt-Journal 2 (December Representation)," MassachusettsReview 1891): 376-77. 19 (winter1978): 859-83. 9 For more on Gibbs and the plantation ownersaround Columbia, see Carol 14 Allan Sekula,"The Body and the 2 See MarthaA. Sandweiss,ed., Photogra- Bleser,ed., Secretand Sacred:The Diaries Archive,"October 39 (winter 1986): 3- phy in Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica (Fort of amesHenry Hammond, a Southern 64. Worth:Amon CarterMuseum, 1991). Slaveholder(New York:Oxford Univer- One of the slavedaguerreotypes was also sity Press,1988). 15 Ibid., p. 10. featuredon the coverof the cataloguefor the exhibition"From Site to Sight," 10 See GeorgeM. Frederickson,"Masters 16 See RolandBarthes, "The Reality Effect," organizedby the PeabodyMuseum, and Mudsills:The Role of Racein the in TheRustle of Language,trans. Richard HarvardUniversity, and circulatedby the PlanterIdeology of South Carolina,"The Howard(New York:Hill andWang, SmithsonianInstitution in 1986. ArroganceofRace: Historical Perspectives 1986), pp. 141-48. For the etymologyof Agassiz'sfifteen slave daguerreotypes on Slavery,Racism, and SocialInequality the word stereotype,see SanderL. arepublished here in theirentirety for (Middletown,Conn.: Wesleyan Gilman,Difference and Pathology: the firsttime. UniversityPress, 1988), pp. 15-27. Stereotypeof Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca,N.Y.: CornellUniversity Press, 3 On LouisAgassiz, see EdwardLurie, 11 This daguerreotype,taken by W. & J. 1989), pp. 15-35; on the uses of the LouisAgassiz: A Lifein Science(Chicago: Langenheim,is reproducedin Melissa word daguerreotype,see Alan Universityof Chicago, 1960). Bantaand GeorgeHinsley, From Site to Trachtenberg,"Photography: The Sight:Anthropology, Photography, and the Emergenceof a Keyword,"in Photogra- 4 For the best discussionof Morton and Powerof1magery (Cambridge, Mass.: phy in Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica, the AmericanSchool of Ethnology,see HarvardUniversity Press, 1986), p. 34. Sandweiss,ed., pp. 13-47. WilliamStanton, TheLeopard's Spots: ScientificAttitudes Toward Race in 12 For more on Frenchattempts to use 17 HerbertH. Odom, "Generalizationson America,1815-59 (Chicago:University daguerreotypesfor anthopologicalstudy, Racein Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica," of Chicago, 1960). See also StephenJay see lEtienne-Reynaud-AugustinSerres, Isis 58 (spring1967): 5-18. See also Gould'sclassic The Mismeasure ofMan "Observationssur I'applicationde la ElizabethEdwards, "Photographic (New York:W. W. Norton & Co., photographiea l'dtudedes race 'Types':The Pursuitof Method,"Visual 1981), pp. 50ff. Gould restagedmany of humaines,"Comptes Rendus des Seances de Anthropology3 (1990): 235-58. Edwards Morton'scranial measurements and l'Acadimiedes Sciences 21 (1845): 242- notes that the Socidtdd'Ethnographie in discoveredimportant discrepancies that 46; HartmutKrech, "Lichtbilder vom Parishad initiateda masterarchival demonstratedthat thereis little differ- Menschen:Vom Typenbildzur projectrecording "human types" as early ence in the size of the cranialcavity of anthropologischenFotographie," as 1866. differentindividuals, regardless of race. Fotogeschichte4 (1984): pp. 3-15; and The culminatingdocument of the "Anwendungder Photographiezum 18 Agassiz,quoted in DictionaryofAmerican anti-DarwinistAmerican School of Studiumder Menschenracen,"Dingler's Biography,vol. 1 (New York:Charles Ethnologywas J. C. Nott and GeorgeR. PolytechnischesJournal (Stuttgart) 97 Scribner'sSons, 1928), p. 120. For Gliddon, TypesofMankind (Philadel- (1845): 400. On Theisson,in particular, informationon the BrandedHand and phia, 1854), which featuredan introduc- see Janet E. Buerger, French Daguerreo- the ScourgedBack, see, respectively, tion by Agassiz.Nott and Gliddon, types(Chicago: University of Chicago RobertSobieszek and Odette M. Appel, thoughdistinguished scientists, were Press,1990), pp. 90-91, 229. TheSpirit of Fact: TheDaguerreotypes of both rabidsegregationists who distorted Southworth& Hawes,1843-1862 arthistorical and archeologicalevidence 13 RobertW. Gibbesto SamuelG. Morton, (Boston:David R. Godine, 1980), p. 23; (mainlyfrom Egyptiantombs) to 31 Marchand June 1850, Library and KathleenCollins, "TheScourged promotetheir view that blackswere Companyof Philadelphia.Although little Back,"History of Photography9, no. 1 historicallyinferior to other races. is known aboutJoseph T. Zealy,we can (January-March1985): 43-45. imaginethe slaves'shock upon entering 5 Agassizto his mother,December 1846 his gallery.The local newspapereditor 19 Morton, Crania Americana (Philadelphia: (HoughtonLibrary, Harvard University), wrote that Zealy'sgallery was "fittedup John Pennington,1839), p. 90. quoted in Gould, pp. 50, 44-45. with great taste. . . . The room where he takeshis picturesis handsomely 20 Winckelmann,paraphrased in Hugh furnished,and we notice thereinan Honour, TheImage of theBlack in 6 Agassiz,quoted in ElinorReichlin, for the accommodationof WesternArt, vol. 4, 2 (Cambridge, "Facesof Slavery:A HistoricalFind," elegantpiano, pt. his visitors. off this is Mass.:Harvard University Press), p. 14. AmericanHeritage 28 (June 1977): 4. lady Immediately

60 Summer 1995 21 See Joy S. Kasson,Marble Queens & in Daguerreotypes,"Quarterly Journal of 29 CocoFusco, "Fantasies of Oppositionality," Captives:Women in Nineteenth-Century theLibrary of Congress31 (July1974): Afterimage16 (December1988): 6-9. AmericanSculpture (New Haven:Yale 127-35. This seriesis also discussedin UniversityPress, 1990). Sekula,"The Body and the Archive,"p. 30 FrederickDouglass, "The Claims of the Considered:An 20; and in Trachtenberg,Reading Negro Ethnologically 14. AddressDelivered in on 22 PeterCamper, quoted in Honour, p. AmericanPhotographs, pp. 57-58. Hudson, Ohio, 12 July 1854," in TheFrederick Douglass See SanderL. Gilman's but ed. W. vol. 2 23 important 27 Literarytheorist Anthony Appiah makes Papers, John Blessingame, controversialtreatment of this historyin a distinctionbetween what he calls (New Haven:Yale University Press, "BlackBodies, White Bodies:Toward an "racialist"and "racist"discourses. The 1979), pp. 510, 514. Iconographyof FemaleSexuality in Late firstinvolves a distinctionof difference Medicineand 31 See AndreaKirsh and SusanFisher Nineteenth-CenturyArt, that have no moralor evaluative Literature,"in "Race," and may CarrieMae Weems Writing, distinctionattributed to it; the second Sterling, (Washing- ed. Louis Gates ton, D.C.: NationalMuseum of Women Difference, Henry Jr. involvesthe of that distinc- of Press, application in the Arts, 1994), 102-9. (Chicago:University Chicago tion to a hierarchicalevaluation that pp. 1986); and Gould, "The In conjunctionwith the Getty StephenJay the of one in Hottentot Venus,"Natural History 19 signals inferiority group Museum's"Hidden Witness" exhibition relationto another.See Kwame (1982): 20-27. Anthony (28 February-18June 1995) of early in Appiah,"," Anatomyof photographyof African-American ed. David 24 See Alan Trachtenberg,ReadingAmerican Racism, Gary Goldberg subjects,Weems was invitedto produce of Minnesota Photographs:Images as History:Mathew (Minneapolis:University her own installation,"Carrie Mae Weems Bradyto WalkerEvans (New York:Hill Press,1990), pp. 4-5. Reactsto 'HiddenWitness'," in an & Wang, 1989), pp. 54-56. adjacentgallery. Using the formatof her 28 GeorgeM. Fredrickson,The Black Image Sea Islandswork, she rephotographed 25 Sekula,"The Body and the Archive," p. 10. in the WhiteMind: TheDebate on Afro- older imagesand addedtexts to comment AmericanCharacter and Destiny,1817- on the photographs'hidden information 26 See MadeleineB. Stern,"Mathew Brady 1914 (Middletown,Conn.: Wesleyan and the changingrepresentations of black and the Rationaleof Crime:A Discovery UniversityPress, 1988), p. 2. subjects.

61 AmericanArt