Through a rich interpretation of the remarkable photographs W. E. B. Du Bois compiled for the American Negro Exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition, Shawn Michelle Smith reveals the visual dimension of the color line that Du Bois famously called “the problem of the twentieth century.” Du Bois’s prize-winning exhibit consisted of three albums together containing 363 black-and-white photographs, mostly of middle-class African Americans from Atlanta and other parts of … More >>
Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture
The book has 2 very contrasting parts. The first is an analysis of Du Bois’ collection of Georgia Negro photographs, that he exhibited at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Several hundred photos. Mostly of middle class American Negroes, well dressed and well posed for the photographer. (Who was not actually Du Bois himself.) The photos tended to show people born after the end of the Civil War and slavery.
In that Paris Exposition, Du Bois’ offering was a deliberate contrast to the other depictions of Africans, which came from the European empires in Africa. These invariably showed tribal Africans. Backward and ignorant. This was the ideological or racial justification for the White Man’s Burden of imperialism. What Du Bois depicted were educated Americans, as an eloquent counterpoint. Here were people of African descent, but otherwise indistinguishable from white middle class Americans or Europeans.
Another fillip was the inclusion of light skinned Negroes by Du Bois. As a rejoinder to a strict racial and racist separation promulgated by some whites. In one example, there is a photo of a girl who looked more southern European (think Spaniard or Italian perhaps) than African. Yet to the white mainstream, she would have been irrevocably classified as Negro.
The second half of the book studies the lynching photos. Taken by whites at lynchings throughout the American South. Here, Smith takes particulars never to show the grotesqueries of the victims. (Other books adequately do this.) Instead, there is an incisive analysis of the white spectators and participants. We see them preening and guiltless. Many of the photos were in fact used as postcards, sent by the participants to others. While the white ideology of those times depicted Negroes as savages, the book asks, who were the actual savages?
Rating: 4 / 5