Through a rich interpretation of the remarkable photographs W. E.
B. Du Bois compiled for the American Negro Exhibit at the 1900
Paris Exposition, Shawn Michelle Smith reveals the visual dimension
of the color line that Du Bois famously called "the problem of the
twentieth century." Du Bois's prize-winning exhibit consisted of
three albums together containing 363 black-and-white photographs,
mostly of middle-class African Americans from Atlanta and other
parts of Georgia. Smith provides an extensive analysis of the
images, the antiracist message Du Bois conveyed by collecting and
displaying them, and their connection to his critical thought. She
contends that Du Bois was an early visual theorist of race and
racism and demonstrates how such an understanding makes the
important concepts he developed--including double consciousness,
the color line, the Veil, and second sight--available to visual
culture and African American studies scholars in powerful new ways.
Smith reads Du Bois's photographs in relation to other
turn-of-the-century images such as scientific typologies, criminal
mugshots, racist caricatures, and lynching photographs. By
juxtaposing these images with reproductions from Du Bois's
exhibition archive, Smith shows how Du Bois deliberately challenged
racist representations of African Americans. Emphasizing the
importance of comparing multiple visual archives, "Photography on
the Color Line" reinvigorates understandings of the stakes of
representation and the fundamental connections between race and
visual culture in the United States.
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