Description
Book SynopsisAn exploration of the visual meaning of the color line and racial politics through the analysis of archival photographs collected by W.E.B. Du Bois and exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1900
Trade Review“
Photography on the Color Line should be widely read and widely taught. In this outstanding book, Shawn Michelle Smith has offered not only a spirited reading of a historically important group of photographs but also a methodology and theoretical grounding that are widely applicable even beyond the specific archive of the Du Bois photographs.”—Laura Wexler, author of
Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S. Imperialism“Photography on the Color Line is both a complicated and fascinating read on race, human displays at expositions, and Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness. It is groundbreaking work on the Du Boisian concept of life on the color line.”—Deborah Willis, coauthor of
A Small Nation of People: W. E. B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of ProgressTable of ContentsList of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xv
INTRODUCTION
Photography on the Color Line 1
CHAPTER ONE
Envisioning Race 25
CHAPTER TWO
The Art of Scientific Propaganda 43
CHAPTER THREE
“Families of Undoubted Respectability” 7
CHAPTER FOUR
Spectacles of Whiteness:
The Photography of Lynching 113
EPILOGUE
The Archivist in the Archive 147
Notes 161
Bibliography 203
Index 217
