Pictures with Purpose - (Double Exposure) by Michèle Gates Moresi & Laura Coyle & Tanya Sheehan (Paperback)

About the Book

Features remarkable portraits of African Americans before and after Emancipation, including images of young African American soldiers in Civil War-era military uniform.

Book Synopsis

Pictures with Purpose, the seventh volume in the Double Exposure series, explores images from the NMAAHC's collection of nineteenth and early twentieth-century photography that includes daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, cartes de visite, cabinet cards, cyanotypes, stereographs, and other early photographic forms. The volume looks at how early photographs of and by African Americans were circulated and used, and considers their meaning, for the sitter, for the photographer, and for the owner of the photograph. Particularly significant is how African Americans used photography to shape their image within and beyond their communities.

Pictures with Purpose features images of unknown African Americans before and after Emancipation--including children, couples, images of young African American soldiers in Civil War-era military uniform, and African American nursemaids with their white charges. Also included are photographs of renowned African Americans such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Mary Church Terrell. Photographers include J.P. Ball, Cornelius M. Battey, Matthew Brady, Frances B. Johnston, and Augustus Washington.

Review Quotes

"A slender, masterfully composed volume."-- Fergus M. Bordewich, Wall Street Journal"A great introduction to the earliest photographs in the museum's collection, and to the ways photographs by and of African Americans operated early in our country's history."--Conor Risch, Photo District News"Today, these pictures are still captivating, encouraging us to celebrate the agency and aspirations of legions of black people, behind and in front of the camera."--TIME"12 Of The Oldest Pictures From Black History In America."--Buzzfeed News"For Turn-of-the-Century African-Americans, the Camera Was a Tool for Empowerment"--Jane Recker, Smithsonian.com

About the Author

Tanya Sheehan is William R. Kenan Jr. Associate Professor of Art at Colby College and editor of the Archives of American Art Journal.
Lonnie G. Bunch III is the Founding Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Michèle Gates Moresi is Supervisory Museum Curator of Collections at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Laura Coyle is Head of Cataloguing and Digitization at National Museum of African American History and Culture.