Washington (United States) (AFP) – Does this photo represent a slave or a free person? This is the question that visitors to the new exhibition of portraits taken almost two centuries ago of African-Americans at the National Gallery of Art in Washington may ask.

Published on: 01/11/2026 - 09:55

The answer is not always obvious in these images previewed by AFP and which date back to the 1840s, when the daguerreotype popularized photography and made images printed on silvered copper plates a widespread memory.

“Throughout the 1840s to 1860s, it was often difficult to tell, just by looking at a portrait of an African-American person, whether they were a slave or whether they were free,” says Diane Wagoner, curator of photographs at the museum.

Slavery persisted in large parts of the United States until the end of the Civil War in 1865, and photos of African Americans, even free ones in the Northern states, are rare.

“It’s easy for us to look at them and think we understand what’s going on, but that’s not always the case. In reality, we don’t have all the elements,” she adds.

- Abolition -

The “Remember me” exhibition, which opens to the public on November 7, presents 70 black and white photos.

Each is accompanied by text providing clues to the identity of the people photographed.

The exhibition, for example, identified the photograph taken in 1848 of a slave, Patty Atavis, staring into the camera, with a white child on her lap.

According to records, she was purchased by a doctor when she was 23 years old. She remained with this family until after the abolition of slavery, before being buried in the family cemetery in 1874.

Other images appear to have been used to argue for the abolition of slavery.

A sheet bearing the inscription "Peculiar institution", a euphemism used for slavery, was found with the 1860 portrait of two anonymous girls.

They could be sisters, but their skin color differs, which seems to indicate that the father of one of them was white.

Ross Kelbaugh, researcher and collector of the majority of the photos presented in the exhibition, believes that this portrait was circulated at abolitionist meetings. The former professor has been collecting photos of this type since 1971.

“I understood at the time that these (photographs) were important and that they were an essential part of American history,” he says.

“Self-determination”

Part of the exhibition also focuses on three African-American figures, James Presley Ball, Glenalvin Goodridge and Augustus Washington, who opened photo studios for white clients in the 1840s.

“These three black photographers excelled in their field,” assures Diane Wagoner, specifying that they signed their works.

“It was to promote their business, but also to assert themselves as artists,” she adds.

The three entrepreneurs campaigned for the abolition of slavery. Augustus Washington then left the United States to photograph the leaders of the new black state, Liberia.

Images from the late 1800s and early 1900s also document the lives of African Americans after migrating north after the Civil War.

“There is this emergence of a generation of black photographers (...) who see photography as a means of self-determination and self-expression,” says Diane Wagoner.

In these photographs, between sophisticated portraits of black couples and women learning to sew, there is also the memory of segregationist laws.

For example, a portrait honors the black nurses of the Red Cross, long excluded before some were then recruited towards the end of the First World War.

© 2026 AFP

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