Every Photograph of Frederick Douglass

October 9, 2019 11:41 AM

“The humblest servant girl may now possess a picture of herself such as the wealth of kings could not purchase 50 years ago" How do I find every photograph ever taken of Frederick Douglass?<

In a lifelong battle against racist imagery, Frederick Douglass had over 160 portraits taken, which he hoped would create a public acknowledgment of his humanity.

I want to create an art exhibit of every photograph ever taken of Frederick Douglass. How do I do this? I would like to find them all...

posted by The Blue Olly to Grab Bag (2 answers total)

You could start here.
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:56 AM on October 9, 2019 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Have you looked at the book linked from that article - Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American? It sounds like it has all the known photographs of Douglass. Not sure if that format will work for your project, but the book should cite where they got the images from. As blnkfrnk pointed out, many are already available online. I haven't looked at the bibliography for Picturing Frederick Douglass, but I'd speculate that the ones you can't find online might be from smaller museums, libraries, or archives, or are in the hands of individual collectors. The latter will be harder to get copies of, but at least most libraries or archives will have a way to get in touch and request a scan/reproduction for $, if they don't have one already available.
posted by radiomayonnaise at 12:38 PM on October 9, 2019 [1 favorite]