To Make Their Own Way in the World is a profound consideration of some of the most challenging images in the early history of photography. The fifteen daguerreotypes―made in 1850 by photographer Joseph T. Zealy―portray Alfred, Delia, Drana, Fassena, Jack, Jem, and Renty, men and women of African descent who were enslaved in South Carolina. Since 1976, when the daguerreotypes were rediscovered at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum, the photographs have been the subject of intense and widespread study. To Make Their Own Way in the World features essays by prominent scholars who explore everything from the photographs’ historical context and the "science” of race to the ways in which photography created a visual narrative of slavery and its effects. Multidisciplinary, deeply collaborative, and with more than two hundred illustrations, including new photography by contemporary artist Carrie Mae Weems, this book frames the Zealy daguerreotypes as works of urgent contemporary inquiry.

A special gift book concerning relationships between mothers and daughters.

This book is designed for anyone who has ever taken care of beloved parents as they age, knowing the heart-rending emotions that come from that responsibility.

In 1850 seven South Carolina slaves were photographed at the request of the famous naturalist Louis Agassiz to provide evidence of the supposed biological inferiority of Africans. Lost for many years, the photographs were rediscovered in the attic of Harvard's Peabody Museum in 1976. In the first narrative history of these images, Molly Rogers tells the story of the photographs, the people they depict, and the men who made and used them. Weaving together the histories of race, science, and photography in nineteenth-century America, Rogers explores the invention and uses of photography, the scientific theories the images were intended to support and how these related to the race politics of the time, the meanings that may have been found in the photographs, and the possible reasons why they were "lost" for a century or more. Each image is accompanied by a brief fictional vignette about the subject's life as imagined by Rogers; these portraits bring the seven subjects to life, adding a fascinating human dimension to the historical material.