The Mirror of Race has published several essays dealing with this image of Delia and with Louis Agassiz. Molly Rogers, in her essay "Fair Women Are Transformed into Negresses," discusses the difficulties of writing about oppressed individuals photographed for scientific purposes, and whether it is possible to liberate such people through an act of imagination. In a second essay, "Louis Agassiz: Full Face and Profile," Molly Rogers takes a biographical approach to these photographs of slaves, considering the images in relation to the personal and professional attitudes of Louis Agassiz, the naturalist who commissioned them. The series of essays by Helena Machado, Flávio Gomes and John Monteiro examines another set of photographs commissioned by Agassiz, this time in Brazil, to provide evidence for his racial theory. |