CAPTIVATING

Unidentified Photographer:
Ten Children
Cyanotype, circa 1898
5 x 8 inches

Cyanotypes, made with the same chemical recipe as architectural blueprints, were popular around the year 1900. Many amateur photographers made cyanotypes, but professionals used the process as well--among them, Frances Benjamin Johnston, who documented the education of African Americans at the Hampton Institute in Virginia and at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

This image was found with several other photographs apparently taken in the rural South. The formal pose is a bit regimented and more commonly used in studio settings, but the faces of these children show a delightful range of personalities and responses to the act of being photographed.






"Slave Boy Brought to Waterbury from Bucks Hill by Aunt Ella Johnson's Second Husband (Whelan)"

Ninth-plate ambrotype, circa 1855

I could not stop looking at this picture...

The identification is from a pencil inscription found behind this small but powerful portrait. A community named Bucks Hill is located in Pennsylvania, where this ambrotype was found. The inscription suggests this lad was freed and brought North, perhaps by abolitionists in Pennsylvania or Connecticut.

Documented photographs of slaves are very rare. Because ambrotypes are each made individually in the camera, this photograph is unique. It has never been published.

VIA: Photography Museum