Frederick Douglass
Samuel J. Miller (American, 1822–1888)
1847-52
- Medium
- Daguerreotype
- Classification
- Photograph
- Dimensions
- 14 × 10.6 cm (5 1/2 × 4 1/8 in., plate); 12.1 × 8.8 cm (4 3/4 × 3 1/2 in., mat opening); 15.2 × 12 × 1.4 cm (6 × 4 3/4 × 1/2 in., plate in closed case); 15.2 × 24 × 2 cm (6 × 9 1/2 × 3/4 in., plate in open case)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Photography and Media
- Credit line
- Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In 1839 Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre announced the perfection of the daguerreotype, a photographic process that employed a silver-coated copperplate sensitive to light. This new artistic process was celebrated for its remarkably sharp detail and praised as a “democratic art” that brought portraiture into reach for the masses. Within a few years, thousands of daguerrean portrait studios had sprung up all over the United States, among them the one that Samuel J. Miller owned in Akron, Ohio. Although most of the likenesses made in commercial studios were formulaic and not very revealing of the subject’s character, this portrait of Frederick Douglass—an escaped slave who had become a lauded speaker, writer, and abolitionist agitator—is a striking exception. Northeastern Ohio was a center of abolitionism prior to the Civil War, and Douglass knew that this picture, one of an astonishing number that he commissioned or posed for, would be seen by ardent supporters of his campaign to end slavery. Douglass was an intelligent manager of his public image and likely guided Miller in projecting his intensity and sheer force of character. As a result, this portrait demonstrates that Douglass…
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
