Interspatialism in the Nineteenth-century South: The Natchez of Henry Norman

Abstract

This essay provides a method and case study for reading photographs as memories. It examines the memories of slavery and the slave trade in Natchez, Mississippi, by analyzing and contextualizing the images of Henry Norman, one of the most important nineteenth-century Southern photographers. Through his family portraits, street scenes, and studio portraits, Norman constructs a progressive vision of Natchez in the years after the Civil War. He erases the slave trade and instead depicts white–black relations as benevolent. His documentary technique is ‘interspatial’: within his interracial compositions, he formally separates blacks and whites, which reflects social hierarchies. In his studio portraits, however, blacks are liberated from the influence of whites within the composition. In this genre, Norman's greatest accomplishment, he affirms the respectability of his subjects and breaks down racial barriers, revealing that ‘true’ art can be a social leveler.