To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes

Product Details

By Ilisa Barbash, Molly Rogers, and Deborah Willis. Foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.. Contributions by Carrie Mae Weems.

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 488
Number of images: 230
Publication date: 09-22-2020
Measurements: 9.25 x 6.5 inches

To Make Their Own Way in the World is a profound
consideration of some of the most challenging
images in the history of photography: fifteen
daguerreotypes of Alfred, Delia, Drana, Fassena,
Jack, Jem, and Renty—men and women of
African descent who were enslaved in South Carolina.

Photographed by Joseph T. Zealy for
Harvard professor Louis Agassiz in 1850, they
were rediscovered at Harvard’s Peabody Museum
in 1976. This groundbreaking multidisciplinary
volume features essays by prominent scholars
who explore such topics as the identities of the
people depicted in the daguerreotypes, the close
relationship between photography and race, and
visual narratives of slavery and its lasting effects.
With over two hundred illustrations, including
new photography by Carrie Mae Weems, this
book frames the Zealy daguerreotypes as works
of urgent engagement.

Copublished by Aperture and Peabody Museum Press