FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
If your question is not covered here, please email us at gfried@suffolk.edu.
QUESTION: Why are the photographs
organized in this way?
ANSWER: Behind this question is an observation: the photographs
in the Mirror of Race website exhibition do not seem to be organized at
all!
This is precisely the point. One of the goals of the Mirror of Race project is
to encourage viewers to reexamine how they see others and themselves. The prejudices
of our seeing deserve exploration and reflection because the categories of race,
to which we have become so accustomed, frequently predetermine how we perceive
other people — and even ourselves. In the United States, we have inherited
categories that tend to make us categorize people by race on the basis of appearance.
The Mirror of Race project seeks to explore and reflect upon these categories
that we employ almost automatically in our daily lives. For this very reason,
the images in the exhibition are not categorized by race, because to do so would
already be to predetermine the viewer’s experience and to reassert the
very historical categories we seek to examine.
By avoiding pre-programmed categorization, each viewer will be freer to think
about how he or she engages with each image on its own terms. In this way, we
hope that viewers can reflect upon the preconceptions that they bring with them
to their seeing, and by doing so, examine whether these categories are adequate
to what we do see, both historically and in our own experiences.
Q: Who could afford to have their picture taken back
then? Was it only for the rich?
A: In the first few years after photography
was first introduced in the United States, in 1839, portraits were quite
expensive. In the early 1840s, a completed image might cost as much as
$8. When you consider that a skilled worker then could earn about $1 a
day, that would have been more than a week’s wages for an average
person, or about $700 in today’s
terms. But because photography became very popular in the US, and many
people took up the trade and began competing for customers, the prices
fell dramatically. By 1850, popular galleries in major cities such as New
York, Boston, and Philadelphia turned out hundreds of portraits each day
and employed numerous operators and laborers to prepare and finish the
images — which could cost as little as 25 cents each, about a few
hours’ wages for a worker. By the time of the Civil War in 1861,
photographers were using cameras with multiple lenses that could make many
images of the same sitter at once. These small tintype portraits could
be had for as little as 5 cents each. It had truly become a democratic
medium, accessible to anyone and everyone.
Q: Could only white men be professional photographers during
this early period?
A: Not at all. There were several prominent African-American
photographers; most famous among them were James Presley Ball of Cincinnati,
Ohio, and Augustus Washington of Hartford, Connecticut. These photographers
had clients of all races. Women also worked as photographers, and some
ran their own studios, though much less is known about them in this era.
Q: Why don’t people smile in these
portraits?
A: Portrait
photography in the early period took its bearings from the conventions
of portrait painting, which preceded it by hundreds of years. To have one’s
portrait painted was a very serious matter, and it cost a great deal of
money, so people would present themselves in the way they would most want
to be remembered. This was true in early photography as well; sitters would
usually wear their best clothes, and they might come to pose with prized
possessions or tools of their trade. To smile might display a lack of seriousness
that most people at that time would not want to convey in a portrait that
they expected to depict their character down through the ages. Early photographs
of people smiling, grinning, or even just being silly do exist, but they
are rare. In fact, the idea that smiling for a photograph is the proper
way to make a portrait is a relatively recent development, starting after
World War Two.