Awards

• Winner of Finalist, Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.

Overview

Within a few years of the introduction of photography into the United States in 1839, slaveholders had already begun commissioning photographic portraits of their slaves. Ex-slaves-turned-abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass had come to see how sitting for a portrait could help them project humanity and dignity amidst northern racism. In the first decade of the medium, enslaved people had begun entering southern daguerreotype studios of their own volition, posing for cameras, and leaving with visual treasures they could keep in their pockets. And, as the Civil War raged, Union soldiers would orchestrate pictures with fugitive slaves that envisioned racial hierarchy as slavery fell. In these ways and others, from the earliest days of the medium to the first moments of emancipation, photography powerfully influenced how bondage and freedom were documented, imagined, and contested. By 1865, it would be difficult for many Americans to look back upon slavery and its fall without thinking of a photograph.Exposing Slavery explores how photography altered and was, in turn, shaped by conflicts over human bondage. Drawing on an original source base that includes hundreds of unpublished and little-studied photographs of slaves, ex-slaves, free African Americans, and abolitionists, as well as written archival materials, it puts visual culture at the center of understanding the experience of late slavery. It assesses how photography helped southerners to defend slavery, enslaved people to shape their social ties, abolitionists to strengthen their movement, and soldiers to pictorially enact interracial society during the Civil War. With diverse goals, these peoples transformed photography from a scientific curiosity into a political tool over only a few decades. This creative first book sheds new light on conflicts over late American slavery, while also revealing a key moment in the relationship between modern visual culture and racialized forms of power and resistance.

Full Product Details

9780190663933

Table of Contents

Reviews

Matthew Fox-Amato's imaginative book allows us to look into the eyes of the black and white people of nineteenth-century America. His inventive and humane study shows how images emerged from commerce and sentiment, from slavery, abolitionism, and the Civil War, from people capturing themselves for a moment in time. It is a fascinating collective portrait. --Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom: Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America Exposing Slavery is a surprising and compelling history of the interconnections between the American embrace of photography in the 1840s and 1850s and rising tensions over slavery. This rare marvel of a book shows how enslaved men and women and abolitionists used the medium to express claims to personhood and build a social movement. --Ann Fabian, President, Society of American Historians Deeply researched, cogently argued, and wonderfully theorized, Matthew Fox-Amato's innovative book is the first full-scale examination of the visual archives of slavery, abolition, and emancipation. This book reveals how the medium of photography became a site of political contestation during the age of the Civil War. It is an original and important intervention that must be reckoned with. --Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition This deeply researched and beautifully written book illuminates how the new medium of photography-invented as the American struggle over slavery reached a fevered pitch-became a tool for political and social change. Fox-Amato doesn't simply use photographs to illustrate his thesis, he builds his original argument from the images themselves, deftly showing how abolitionists and slaveholders, enslaved people and freedmen, alike, all harnessed the new technology to make a persuasive case for their own ideas about personhood, property, and civil rights. The links between photography and American thinking about slavery are so clear here, one wonders how they could have remained hidden in the archives for so long. --Martha A. Sandweiss, author of Print the Legend: Photography and the American West Exposing Slavery takes a fresh look at the role of photography in 'humanizing' the institution of chattel slavery. Revisiting the archive of slave photography that haunts contemporary representations of the subjection of black bodies in the twenty-first century, the book complicates our understanding of the subjects of these images at a moment when digital imaging has become one of the most important tools in the ongoing battle against antiblack violence. The book provides a significant rebuttal to any assertion that these historical images are simply a reflection of mastery or submission. It tells a very different story that challenges us to look more closely at this troubling and insightful archive. --Tina Campt, author of Listening to Images

[An] original, richly illustrated, and brilliant book -- Library Journal Matthew Fox-Amato's imaginative book allows us to look into the eyes of the black and white people of nineteenth-century America. His inventive and humane study shows how images emerged from commerce and sentiment, from slavery, abolitionism, and the Civil War, from people capturing themselves for a moment in time. It is a fascinating collective portrait. --Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom: Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America Exposing Slavery is a surprising and compelling history of the interconnections between the American embrace of photography in the 1840s and 1850s and rising tensions over slavery. This rare marvel of a book shows how enslaved men and women and abolitionists used the medium to express claims to personhood and build a social movement. --Ann Fabian, President, Society of American Historians Deeply researched, cogently argued, and wonderfully theorized, Matthew Fox-Amato's innovative book is the first full-scale examination of the visual archives of slavery, abolition, and emancipation. This book reveals how the medium of photography became a site of political contestation during the age of the Civil War. It is an original and important intervention that must be reckoned with. --Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition This deeply researched and beautifully written book illuminates how the new medium of photography-invented as the American struggle over slavery reached a fevered pitch-became a tool for political and social change. Fox-Amato doesn't simply use photographs to illustrate his thesis, he builds his original argument from the images themselves, deftly showing how abolitionists and slaveholders, enslaved people and freedmen, alike, all harnessed the new technology to make a persuasive case for their own ideas about personhood, property, and civil rights. The links between photography and American thinking about slavery are so clear here, one wonders how they could have remained hidden in the archives for so long. --Martha A. Sandweiss, author of Print the Legend: Photography and the American West Exposing Slavery takes a fresh look at the role of photography in 'humanizing' the institution of chattel slavery. Revisiting the archive of slave photography that haunts contemporary representations of the subjection of black bodies in the twenty-first century, the book complicates our understanding of the subjects of these images at a moment when digital imaging has become one of the most important tools in the ongoing battle against antiblack violence. The book provides a significant rebuttal to any assertion that these historical images are simply a reflection of mastery or submission. It tells a very different story that challenges us to look more closely at this troubling and insightful archive. --Tina Campt, author of Listening to Images As Fox-Amato shows, photography played a significant role in the debates over notions of status, identity, and community, and those boundaries regarding personhood continued well into the following century. A groundbreaking examination of the effect of modernity on established norms. --Kirkus In Exposing Slavery, Matthew Fox-Amato, a historian at the University of Idaho, persuasively argues that photography changed Americans' perception of both slavery and the humanity of blacks... No one who reads Exposing Slavery will ever see antebellum and Civil War-era photographs of black Americans in the same way again. Quite apart from the author's thorough research and tight prose, the many accompanying photographs are superlatively reproduced on high-quality paper, making them seem as crisp and striking as the day they were made. --Wall Street Journal

"""Lavishly illustrated, the book...urges historians to rethink the antebellum U.S. as a highly visual society in which people practiced, produced, and consumed photographic images. It similarly demands photo- and art-historians...rethink the political ramifications of early photography.... An original and compelling contribution to nineteenth-century American history, the book channels our view through the photographic lens, which shaped the self-understanding of a young nation approaching conflict."" -- Carolin Görgen, Revue française d'études américaines ""Remarkable and pathbreaking...Fox-Amato's study of the photographic history of slaves and ex-slaves brilliantly assembles disparate bits of visual and textual evidence into telling insights about white American racial stereotypes and black resistance that reverberate into the present. His work shows how difficult it is to get at the truth of the slave experience, and how rewarding it is when the historical and visual detective work is done so thoroughly and effectively. The implications for our own time make reading this visual story difficult but looking away impossible."" -- Terrie Dopp Aamodt, American Historical Review ""An important contribution to the histories of slavery, abolition, visual culture politics, and photography. Moreover, the book's central argumentative thread shows how in the antebellum United States each of these domains were intertwined with the others in more subtle ways... than historians have previously appreciated. Scholars will rightfully be turning to these pages again and again for the important and under-remarked case studies that Fox-Amato brings to light through his deep and creative archival work....This research would be noteworthy on its own, even if it were not also paired in the book with deft storytelling, sensitive analysis, and a real dedication to seeing subtle stories in the materials."" -- Monica Huerta, New England Quarterly ""Exposing Slavery gives some revealing insights on a somewhat overlooked aspect of ideological warfare."" -- Jon Guttman, Civil War Times ""Exposing Slavery is a significant contribution to 19th and 20th -century visual studies examining the relationship between race, representation, and photography. Fox-Amato's book is meticulous research that is well organized and cohesive, managing to cover a great number of themes."" -- Earnestine Jenkins, Reviews in History ""Exposing Slavery deserves rich praise for casting light on the role that photography played in the institution of slavery, and how various agents adopted the photographic lens as a way of identifying themselves and others in line with their ideological perceptions. Fox-Amato engages with an archive that, despite its silences, is richly fleshed out in this text. By unearthing new materials and offering a new framework through which to consider these images and texts, Exposing Slavery will inspire discussion on the nature of photography in the nineteenth century for some time to come."" -- Emily R. Brady, American Nineteenth Century History ""[An] original, richly illustrated, and brilliant book"" -- Library Journal ""Matthew Fox-Amato's imaginative book allows us to look into the eyes of the black and white people of nineteenth-century America. His inventive and humane study shows how images emerged from commerce and sentiment, from slavery, abolitionism, and the Civil War, from people capturing themselves for a moment in time. It is a fascinating collective portrait.""--Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom: Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America ""Exposing Slavery is a surprising and compelling history of the interconnections between the American embrace of photography in the 1840s and 1850s and rising tensions over slavery. This rare marvel of a book shows how enslaved men and women and abolitionists used the medium to express claims to personhood and build a social movement.""--Ann Fabian, President, Society of American Historians ""Deeply researched, cogently argued, and wonderfully theorized, Matthew Fox-Amato's innovative book is the first full-scale examination of the visual archives of slavery, abolition, and emancipation. This book reveals how the medium of photography became a site of political contestation during the age of the Civil War. It is an original and important intervention that must be reckoned with.""--Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition ""This deeply researched and beautifully written book illuminates how the new medium of photography-invented as the American struggle over slavery reached a fevered pitch-became a tool for political and social change. Fox-Amato doesn't simply use photographs to illustrate his thesis, he builds his original argument from the images themselves, deftly showing how abolitionists and slaveholders, enslaved people and freedmen, alike, all harnessed the new technology to make a persuasive case for their own ideas about personhood, property, and civil rights. The links between photography and American thinking about slavery are so clear here, one wonders how they could have remained hidden in the archives for so long.""--Martha A. Sandweiss, author of Print the Legend: Photography and the American West ""Exposing Slavery takes a fresh look at the role of photography in 'humanizing' the institution of chattel slavery. Revisiting the archive of slave photography that haunts contemporary representations of the subjection of black bodies in the twenty-first century, the book complicates our understanding of the subjects of these images at a moment when digital imaging has become one of the most important tools in the ongoing battle against antiblack violence. The book provides a significant rebuttal to any assertion that these historical images are simply a reflection of mastery or submission. It tells a very different story that challenges us to look more closely at this troubling and insightful archive.""--Tina Campt, author of Listening to Images ""As Fox-Amato shows, photography played a significant role in the debates over notions of status, identity, and community, and those boundaries regarding personhood continued well into the following century. A groundbreaking examination of the effect of modernity on established norms.""--Kirkus ""In Exposing Slavery, Matthew Fox-Amato, a historian at the University of Idaho, persuasively argues that photography changed Americans' perception of both slavery and the humanity of blacks... No one who reads Exposing Slavery will ever see antebellum and Civil War-era photographs of black Americans in the same way again. Quite apart from the author's thorough research and tight prose, the many accompanying photographs are superlatively reproduced on high-quality paper, making them seem as crisp and striking as the day they were made.""--Wall Street Journal ""Cogent and compelling... As... Matthew Fox-Amato... reveals, visual technology became a powerful political tool, animating debates about the social identities of African Americans and the ideal racial order of the United States.""--Glenn C. Altschuler, Florida Courier ""Exposing Slavery is a valuable aid for thinking through this tangle of issues around race, sight, power, and bodies. For Fox-Amato, slavery and the Civil War were central to the development of photography... Fox-Amato tenderly unspools how fundamental photography became to asserting kinship and love for a people whose circumstances unrelentingly reminded them that they possessed no legal rights to either."" --Alexis L. Boylan, Boston Review ""Beyond providing important historical insights relevant to today's racial and visual politics, it schools us in ways of looking. The arresting reproductions of old photographs call on us to slow down and pay attention. Fox-Amato's cogent exposition of what's on offer in the photographs--what they open up and open on to, if you will--invites us to look more deeply not only into our past but into our present. Add Exposing Slavery to your reading list and your syllabus. We'll all be better for it.""--Times Higher Education ""Fox-Amato's book is a unique contribution to the historical record."" --Civil War Book Review ""With over 100 color illustrations, Fox-Amato reminds the reader of not just the horrors of the past but also the impact photography had in exposing them. From current and ex-slaves to free Americans and abolitionists, Exposing Slavery brings much needed awareness to one of the ugliest periods in this country's history.""--The Advocate"

Exposing Slavery deserves rich praise for casting light on the role that photography played in the institution of slavery, and how various agents adopted the photographic lens as a way of identifying themselves and others in line with their ideological perceptions. Fox-Amato engages with an archive that, despite its silences, is richly fleshed out in this text. By unearthing new materials and offering a new framework through which to consider these images and texts, Exposing Slavery will inspire discussion on the nature of photography in the nineteenth century for some time to come. -- Emily R. Brady, American Nineteenth Century History [An] original, richly illustrated, and brilliant book -- Library Journal Matthew Fox-Amato's imaginative book allows us to look into the eyes of the black and white people of nineteenth-century America. His inventive and humane study shows how images emerged from commerce and sentiment, from slavery, abolitionism, and the Civil War, from people capturing themselves for a moment in time. It is a fascinating collective portrait. --Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom: Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America Exposing Slavery is a surprising and compelling history of the interconnections between the American embrace of photography in the 1840s and 1850s and rising tensions over slavery. This rare marvel of a book shows how enslaved men and women and abolitionists used the medium to express claims to personhood and build a social movement. --Ann Fabian, President, Society of American Historians Deeply researched, cogently argued, and wonderfully theorized, Matthew Fox-Amato's innovative book is the first full-scale examination of the visual archives of slavery, abolition, and emancipation. This book reveals how the medium of photography became a site of political contestation during the age of the Civil War. It is an original and important intervention that must be reckoned with. --Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition This deeply researched and beautifully written book illuminates how the new medium of photography-invented as the American struggle over slavery reached a fevered pitch-became a tool for political and social change. Fox-Amato doesn't simply use photographs to illustrate his thesis, he builds his original argument from the images themselves, deftly showing how abolitionists and slaveholders, enslaved people and freedmen, alike, all harnessed the new technology to make a persuasive case for their own ideas about personhood, property, and civil rights. The links between photography and American thinking about slavery are so clear here, one wonders how they could have remained hidden in the archives for so long. --Martha A. Sandweiss, author of Print the Legend: Photography and the American West Exposing Slavery takes a fresh look at the role of photography in 'humanizing' the institution of chattel slavery. Revisiting the archive of slave photography that haunts contemporary representations of the subjection of black bodies in the twenty-first century, the book complicates our understanding of the subjects of these images at a moment when digital imaging has become one of the most important tools in the ongoing battle against antiblack violence. The book provides a significant rebuttal to any assertion that these historical images are simply a reflection of mastery or submission. It tells a very different story that challenges us to look more closely at this troubling and insightful archive. --Tina Campt, author of Listening to Images As Fox-Amato shows, photography played a significant role in the debates over notions of status, identity, and community, and those boundaries regarding personhood continued well into the following century. A groundbreaking examination of the effect of modernity on established norms. --Kirkus In Exposing Slavery, Matthew Fox-Amato, a historian at the University of Idaho, persuasively argues that photography changed Americans' perception of both slavery and the humanity of blacks... No one who reads Exposing Slavery will ever see antebellum and Civil War-era photographs of black Americans in the same way again. Quite apart from the author's thorough research and tight prose, the many accompanying photographs are superlatively reproduced on high-quality paper, making them seem as crisp and striking as the day they were made. --Wall Street Journal Cogent and compelling... As... Matthew Fox-Amato... reveals, visual technology became a powerful political tool, animating debates about the social identities of African Americans and the ideal racial order of the United States. --Glenn C. Altschuler, Florida Courier Exposing Slavery is a valuable aid for thinking through this tangle of issues around race, sight, power, and bodies. For Fox-Amato, slavery and the Civil War were central to the development of photography... Fox-Amato tenderly unspools how fundamental photography became to asserting kinship and love for a people whose circumstances unrelentingly reminded them that they possessed no legal rights to either. --Alexis L. Boylan, Boston Review Beyond providing important historical insights relevant to today's racial and visual politics, it schools us in ways of looking. The arresting reproductions of old photographs call on us to slow down and pay attention. Fox-Amato's cogent exposition of what's on offer in the photographs--what they open up and open on to, if you will--invites us to look more deeply not only into our past but into our present. Add Exposing Slavery to your reading list and your syllabus. We'll all be better for it. --Times Higher Education Fox-Amato's book is a unique contribution to the historical record. --Civil War Book Review With over 100 color illustrations, Fox-Amato reminds the reader of not just the horrors of the past but also the impact photography had in exposing them. From current and ex-slaves to free Americans and abolitionists, Exposing Slavery brings much needed awareness to one of the ugliest periods in this country's history. --The Advocate

Author Information

Matthew Fox-Amato is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Idaho. He is a historian of visual and material culture.

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