A photograph is a social relationship. It’s more than a mere object, containing the context of its purpose and display, the relationship between subject and creator. They are captures of power dynamics and politics, agency and conflict. With this in mind, how do archivists navigate the power of these images? The Zealy Daguerrotypes, a collection of images showing enslaved Africans and African-Americans in the 1800’s, is a sobering example of the social and political power of photographic image.
Harvard professor Louis Agassiz commissioned daguerrotypes of enslaved persons captive on a plantation. His intent was to visually prove the inferiority of the African race by stripping the subjects and posing them to capture four sides of their upper bodies. In total, there are seven subjects staring out from the silver plated daguerrotypes, which are no larger than a human palm. Their re-emergence in the Peabody Museum Archives in the 1970’s captured the imagination and emotion of researchers and historians. To this day the images are reproduced in various peer-reviewed papers, published books, and remain publicly accessible on various internet archival resources.
Two of the subjects are now the center of a contested legal battle.
For Tamara Lanier, it began as a genealogical quest to discover her ancestors. Her journey weaving together family stories and history took her to the Peabody Museum in Harvard University, where she laid eyes on two ancestors. Renty and Delia, two of the subjects in the Zealy Daguerrotype collection, are her relatives. The emotion and experience of finding her relatives, whose stories she had heard repeatedly in her childhood, was soured by the violence of the images where they remain frozen.
Considering the social context of these daguerrotypes, they are inherently violent. Enslaved persons, stripped and photographed like objects, to serve the racist and White supremacist end of the Harvard professor, the daguerrotypes replicate the dehumanized gaze of the creator.
Lanier instantly thought they were “out of place” in the Harvard Archives. They belonged with her. In her mind, “the daguerrotypes are not property that can be owned but ancestors who need caretaking”, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay writes. They are her relatives – shouldn’t they be reunited with their descendants? Furthermore, there is the issue of compensation. The Zealy Daguerrotypes have been utilized in publications and events since the 1970’s, so Lanier claimed that in a sense her relatives were still exploited by the university.
The lawsuit placed in 2019 was dismissed in 2021. While the court did not deny Lanier’s relationship to Delia and Renty, they declared that Harvard had a legal right to keep the daguerrotypes based on the significance of the collection and the fact Agassiz commissioned them under Harvard oversight.
This in itself is a shade of the violence present in the daguerrotypes themselves. Prioritizing the racist ideals of a White supremacist, the court and Harvard University prioritize violence. Latria Graham puts it: “the rediscovery of the daguerrotypes and their use in revenue-generating materials in the present day have helped surface an ethical issue that has long accompanied Black people’s bodies: their presentation and exploitation still, in many cases, outweigh individual ownership and autonomy”. The court’s decision and Harvard’s repeated dismissal of Lanier go to this point as well. Harvard’s decision and the court’s support reinforce the dehumanization of slavery and the context of the daguerrotypes themselves, Renty and Delia are not humans with agency but objects in the eyes of the law. Furthermore, proven genealogical relation to the subjects does not protect descendants.
It raises a larger question: when does scholarship become violence?
A second question: do archives have a right to hold items related to violence and violent acts if it goes against descendant or community wishes?
The Peabody Museum carries some disclaimers on their publicly accessible site, explaining that past languages and practices are “no longer acceptable”. However, the Zealy daguerrotypes remain publicly accessible on the Peabody website and affiliated archival resources like ArtStor.
The Peabody offers some information about the historical significance of the daguerrotypes here which emphasize the historic value of the images and their creation context. But the context in question is not elaborated on, nor is there space to prepare viewers to such images and re-establish the humanity of the subjects in question.
Lanier continues to pursue legal rights in the Massachusetts court system. She continues to elevate the humanity of her ancestors while fighting for financial compensation of the various publications that have centered Delia and Renty. If the courts side with her, Renty, and Delia, which I unabashedly hope they do, it will set a legal precedent for others to reclaim family members and individual history.
Lanier is not alone.
In Philadelphia, community organizer Abdul-Aily Muhammad and others have spent years demanding reparations from the University of Pennsylvania, where skulls taken from Black Philadelphians and enslaved Africans were on display until 2020 and remain digitally accessible in an online archive. The remains are part of the Morton Collection, a vast assemblage of some 1000 skulls that were collected to prove the physical and mental differences between race. Morton’s findings and collection has thus been utilized to sustain White supremacist notions of superiority in later scholarship. While the skulls have since been taken off of public display in the museum and university classrooms, their digitized images remain accessible as well as their use in online videos and classes. Public pressure and the work of activists like Muhammad have forced the museum to announce repatriation, though what that will look like is still up in the air.
The Morton Collection and the Zealy Daguerrotypes are thus two examples of the ways White supremacy cultivated collections that continue to benefit from “historic significance” yet cause continued harm to descendant communities. Thus the universities, courts, historians, and archivists who continue to prioritize this continued violence over community wishes are complicit in continued and sustained violence. The Zealy Daguerrotypes and Morton Collection are not alone, there are many collections across the country that continue to sustain violence. Moving away from this practice and centering descendant needs will thus require archivists and historians to question and challenge many of the innate entitlements of their disciplines. First and foremost privileging historic significance in a field where so many of these decisions on ethics and protection are made by individual professionals demands some scrutiny and critique. If archivists are committed to protecting collections, who will protect the subjects in historic photographs?
Lanier is one such protector, advocating for the humanity of her ancestors in a way the university does not acknowledge. As we await a new date for her next hearing, we need to make noise about the ongoing violence by the university and challenge assumptions about ownership and access in our own institutions. We need to examine our seemingly innate rights to information and images as historians. White archivists and historians especially need to confront the White supremacy at work in our discipline.
For the most recent news and writings, please read her Twitter. You can read her historic lawsuit here. Take action with the Harvard Coalition to Free Renty here. Sign the petition here.
To support the work of Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, please visit here.
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