Douglass argued that humans are unique among animals in their ability to make and appreciate images. Then he made a rather abrupt transition toward his usual topics — abolition, national disunion, and racial justice. Audience members might have wondered what Douglass’s interest in photography had to do with his larger political project until he ties political and technological progress together at the end of the speech:
The Increased facilities of locommotion, the growing inter communication of distant nations, the rapid transmission of intelligence over the globe — the world wide ramifications of commerce — bringing together the knowledge, the skill, and the mental power of the world — cannot but dispel prejudice[,] dissolve the granite barriers of arbitrary power, bring the world into, peace and unity, and at last crown the world with just[ice,] Liberty, and brotherly kindness. …
In every locommotive a herald of progress — the startling scream of the Engine — and the small ticking sound of the telegraph are a like phrophecies of hope to the philanthropist, and warnings to the systems of slavery, superstition and oppression to get themselves away to the mirky shades of barbarism.
It’s a real techno-optimist manifesto (so to speak). Douglass saw new technologies as connecting and liberating people rather than oppressing them. And he especially believed that photographic technology, used well, could propel the cause of equality forward.
Frederick Douglass got his picture taken as often as he could because he saw photography as a less prejudiced medium than a painting or drawing could ever be. He had long believed, as he wrote in 1849, that
negroes can never have impartial portraits at the hands of white artists. It seems to us next to impossible for white men to take likenesses of black men, without most grossly exaggerating their distinctive features.
But a photograph, Douglass believed, told the truth. He could be seen as he really was, not as a white person imagined him to be. He could use photographs of himself to combat the flood of racist caricatures that misled white Americans about black people’s abilities and intelligence. These pictures helped Douglass to become a “Representative American man,” as his contemporary and friend James McCune Smith put it.
Douglass’ portraits, whether taken early in his life or as he aged, show an individual of fierce intelligence and dignity. He never smiled, because he didn’t want to lean into the stereotype of the “happy slave.”
Not only did he sit for well over 100 portraits, Douglass also worked hard to circulate his image. He carried pocket-sized photos (called cartes de visite) with him. Every time he left his image with someone, he was spreading the idea that he was a man like any other.