The unsung: Slaves, Cities

While the dominant imagery seemed inextricably bound up in the ideologies of expansion and empire, there was an entirely different America: poor, often desperately so; enslaved and, when freed, still without rights; immigrant, urban, working in factories. All of these different groups had their imagery-- it was just harder to see.

Slaves

The presence of Africans brought over to North America as slaves was a matter only rarely depicted in visual imagery. William Sidney Mount set a rare slavery-and-freedom scene in his 1847 painting, The Power of Music:

And slaves appeared periodically in daguerreotypes, sometimes made for them, sometimes for their masters (as evidence in cases of runaway slaves, or as evidence of ownership, or as advertising when slaves were put up for sale)

We don't know the background of these two girls, but speculate that this was a young mistress and her slightly older slave-servant.

This view, we speculate, depicts a slave worker in a picture made for his owner, or in a picture meant to be an "artful" genre picture.

When Zealy made his daguerreotype views of slaves on plantations for the collection of the Harvard scientist Agassiz, we do know something of the circumstances. Agassiz sought evidence of separate lineages of slaves and whites, and also within African heritage, to support his racist theories. The pictures themselves are, however, deeply compelling; they seem to simultaneously depict the horrors and degradations of slavery, and the basic human dignity of the enslaved, their resistance to dehumanization.

J.T. Zealy, Portrait of Renty, African-Born.

Cities

Certainly there was a celebratory view of the city, particularly after the Civil War, when urbanization, industrial capitalism, and waves of immigration all accelerated and cities like New York and Chicago expanded their scope and influence.

Boston bird's eye view, probably around 1880

Bird's-Eye view of Chicago, 1893

Currier and Ives, View of Central Park

Rand, McNally view of downtown Chicago for an 1893 Chicago guidebook

S.B. Frank, Lake Shore Drive, Chicago 1893

J.S. Johnston, The El at South Ferry New York, ca. 1888

Isaiah W. Taber, The Baldwin Hotel, San Francisco, ca. 1885

Charles Dudley Arnold, View of the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893