Abstract
This article examines ‘Pictures and Progress’, a speech Frederick Douglass delivered in 1861 in order to map his theoretical understanding of the shifting relationships between photography, the ‘picture-making process’ and political reform. Coming to grips with his diverse strategies of visual signification, this essay analyses Douglass's theory of photography and aesthetics in relation to one of his most iconic and recently discovered daguerreotyped portraits, Frederick Douglass, dated c. 1847–1852. Shedding light upon alternative ways in which to recover the otherwise elided complexities of black male and female subjects circulating in white mainstream iconography, this article encourages in-depth scholarly recognition of Douglass's politicised aesthetics and aestheticised politics as he fought to transform ‘typical negroes’ into ‘works of art’.
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