The International African American Museum (IAAM) in Charleston, South Carolina, has officially acquired a set of 15 daguerreotypes, dating to 1850, that scholars believe to be the earliest known photographs taken of enslaved Americans.
The seven enslaved people photographed for the series are identified as Alfred, Delia, Drana, Fassena, Jack, Jem, and Renty; Renty and Delia were father and daughter, respectively, as were Jack and Drana. “The 1850 Daguerreotypes,” as the IAAM is now calling the collection, were taken by J. T. Zealy in South Carolina, where the sitters had been enslaved, more than 175 years ago, and just over a decade after the invention of the daguerreotype. The images show each subject from the waist up, shirtless, and from frontal and profile view.
They were commissioned by Louis Agassiz, a 19th-century natural historian and a professor at Harvard University, which owned the photographs until recently, to advance racist ideology about Black people. The images were rediscovered in Harvard’s holdings in 1976.
The IAAM hosted a reception to welcome the photographs to their new home on Wednesday, according to a report in the New York Times. In a release, the IAAM characterized its planned care for the photographs that would reframe them “from instruments of pseudoscience into portraits honoring the lives” of the seven enslaved people.
In a statement, IAAM president and CEO Tonya M. Matthew said, “IAAM is honored to take over stewardship of these images because preserving the stories of African American history and reckoning with the stories of the founding of our nation is not only our mission, but a call to action for all of us. The full interpretation of these images will be transformational, moving the narrative from one of dehumanizing intent to one of the intersections of trauma, resilience, self-determination, and authentic, empathetic memory.”
A six-year legal battle between Harvard and Tamara Lanier, whose independent genealogy research has shown her to be a descendant of Renty and Delia. Lanier filed the lawsuit in Massachusetts in 2019, claiming that as the descendant they were her rightful property.
The suit, according to a Times report from when it was filed, called the images “spoils of theft,” arguing that as enslaved people the photograph’s sitters were not able to give consent.
“It is unprecedented in terms of legal theory and reclaiming property that was wrongfully taken,” Benjamin Crump, the high-profile civil rights attorney who was part of Lanier’s legal team, told the Times in 2019. “Renty’s descendants may be the first descendants of slave ancestors to be able to get their property rights.”
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ultimately ruled against Lanier’s ownership claims, but Harvard ultimately reached a settlement to hand over the images to another institution, with the IAAM being chosen as the recipient. The transfer officially occurred in late 2025.
A Harvard spokesperson told the Times that it had also made a financial contribution to the IAAM “to honor their legacies and humanity in ways that contribute to the deeper perspective and understanding of our nation’s history.”
Credit: artnews
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