An historical bargain.

[1]

This early twentieth-century photograph was purchased a few years ago for an unremarkable sum at a trade show in Las Vegas. If one had the patience to sort through the mass of images scattered across the oblong table something of interest was bound to emerge from such a great quantity of anonymous military photographs. After poring over the piles of old photographs I found myself taken with a double portrait. In the image one sees a dignified mustachioed gentleman standing tall, with one arm resting on a dark lacquered chair and the other holding a fountain pen. The costume of this man reveals his occupation as a decorated soldier. The woman pictured wears a full-length white dress, something that might be worn for church on Sundays, with a bit of dark piping about four inches above the hem. A delicate white lace shawl rests around her shoulders, draping down the length of her body. A piece of lace covers her right hand and in her left she rests a white book on top of a small table, covered in floral tapestry , that stands between them. Behind the book on the table is a simple vase holding a palm frond.

A heavy embossed ivory card with a studio stamp in the lower right-hand corner, backs the photograph. The verso of the card carries a beautifully handwritten message that reads, "Merry Christmas, and compliments of 1st Sgt. And [sic] Mrs. Robert Johnson. To Qu. M. Sgt. And [sic] Mrs. W.L. Davis, Fort Ethen [sic] Allen V. T. December 1909." The inscription identifies the sitters as well as establishes the photograph as a personal gift given to commemorate the holiday season.

Upon acquisition I approached the image like a sleuth. I wanted to know a little bit about the characters seen or named In the image. A little research revealed the identity and whereabouts of the soldier pictured, as well as the soldier receiving the gift. They were both decorated members of Company K, stationed at Fort Ethan Allen in August 1909. Surprisingly this information was quite easy to find, but knowing the military past of these men was not enough to fully understand the object's function as an historical photograph. Truthfully, I think I wanted to champion them as forgotten heroes that could be written back into history as notable. I was looking for a narrative or voice; some tangible connection to this trace of personal record. This photograph therefore presented me with a primary obstacle that I would have to address or circumvent if I planned on being able to write an historical account that embraced vernacular photographs, namely that these personal mementos often lack value and context outsid e the framework in which they were made and circulated.

I began research that would allow me to recreate the time period and the circumstances under which this photograph was made. I immersed myself in Deborah Willis's work, particularly her latest book Black Reflections: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present. (1) Black photographers are the subjects of the book and black sitters are quite often the subjects of the portraits under discussion, although this is not exclusively the case. The studio stamp on my bargain image had indicated a location of Wisnooski, Vermont, a small town just outside Fort Ethan Allan. I had hoped to find a mention of it amongst the numerous studio listings that Willis had compiled, but this was in vain. I did not even know if the photographer was white or black. I wondered if it mattered. Despite Willis's extraordinary contribution and careful scholarship I had been disappointed with the fact that she seemed to focus too heavily on cataloguing the offenses of the past (the absence of black photographers from established ph oto histories) and worked only to adjust the balance of this neglect. While I understand and respect her motivation to do this, I also feel that she short-circuited an opportunity to challenge the basic conventions of a normative photographic history. Hierarchy, classification and teleology had remained the overriding structures of Black Reflections. Unfortunately, in the end, she rewrote the same old history with a different cast of characters.

How could I incorporate my conventional studio portrait into a history of photography that continued to organize itself around the tenets of art history? What had not occurred to me was that I needed to reach outside of the discipline in order to build a fresh approach to the project at hand. The ideas of Visual Culture seemed to offer me a lifeline. Although I had found the idea of speaking "to" the object rather than "about" it to be confusing, the process that had been introduced by Irit Rogoff's essay "Studying Visual Culture" seemed to linger in the back of my mind. (2) Perhaps freeing vernacular images from the binding structures of art history would allow me to challenge my own way of seeing things and enable me to construct a new way of experiencing the image at hand. It was becoming clear that my training as an art historian had not adequately prepared me to deal with an object like this. What appealed to me about a Visual Culture approach was that it purportedly negated a number of things that I had been finding problematic and unfruitful anyway. It claimed not to historicize the object, not to place it in a narrow history of art nor a broader genealogy within the world of social and cultural developments. It always eschewed judgments regarding quality and did not wish to catalogue offenses or repeat, under the guise of correcting, mistakes of the past. In essence, Visual Culture seemed to free the object of preconceived ways of measuring an image's value and significance.

Rogoff countered the concept of the "trained art historical eye" with that of the "curious eye" which appraised things outside of the known. Perhaps this was a good place to start because I had chosen the image, but it was becoming increasingly clear that I had not tried to fully articulate why. Visual Culture provided a structure that shifts attention to the viewer. History then comes to be as much about the viewer as the object being studied. In shifting the focus to myself, I began to realize that I had never really tried to understand why this image had appealed to me. What did it mean for a young white woman living in New York City to own an image of a black soldier and his wife from the early twentieth century? The inscription reveals clearly that this image was personal and intimate, given as a gift to another black couple, which was either close friends or relatives. I had not been intended as part of the exchange. (3) Just the fact that this object was in my possession shifted the photograph's meanin g. Never could I successfully and correctly recreate the original context of the exchange because I had not been present. Why had I sought to ignore this very obvious aspect of the portrait? My only relationship to this photograph now was through the present.

A few things were revealed to me as I entered a new kind of dialogue with my past. Acquiring this photograph was a reflection of my fascination with old documents and images from the turn of the century. This general interest evolved from my active pursuit in mapping my family's genealogy, most specifically my paternal grandfather's branch of the family. My great-grandfather had come to this country from Ruthenia (now part of Ukraine) at the turn of the century and made his way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to work in the steel mills. He died while his children were in their teens and their mother, his wife, abandoned the family, returning to the old country. Despite hours spent searching in the National Archives, I still know very little about these ancestors. I do not know what my great-grandfather looked like and have felt a great void in never having seen his picture. Probably as a result of this experience, I have a great general interest in immigration and self-made men from the dawn of the twentieth cent ury.

[2]

This said, I feel that I must address the two aspects of myself that affect my reading of the picture: first, as an American I am keenly aware that this country draws strength from the multitude of backgrounds and experiences that each individual brings to it. We all share a common striving for success and fulfillment, however defined. Hard work and a sense of progress are the threads that bind our lives together. Yet for all these shared traits, our differences define personal journeys. My second point of view is one of a white American, a woman who has a different set of experiences than someone of color, especially circumstances related to race at the end of the last century. My dialogue with this image became an uncomfortable one when I pressed issues of race and difference into the fold of my analysis.

The photograph in question appealed to me because the man in it beamed with pride. He had made something of himself despite the fact he had most likely been a descendant of a slave. His forefathers might not have chosen the conditions under which they originally experienced America, but they were not going to keep him from finding success even within the restrictive environment of a black regiment. Perhaps one of the most noteworthy aspects of the picture is the strong, self-assured pose held by 1st Sergeant Johnson. He had great reason to be proud of his accomplishments and being photographed with his wife was a means of documenting this moment in their personal history. The concept of self-realization is embedded in all of us, but there was another set of influences that profoundly affected the notion of black representation at the turn of the century.

How racial and national identities were posed and negotiated in the terrain of visual culture at the dawn of the twentieth century was at that time a widely contemplated question. One particular venue where the public was presented with such issues was at the Paris Exposition of 1900. As Shawn Michelle Smith has described, one pavilion was particularly active in this regard: "...the American Negro exhibit itself was deeply invested in defining the place of the "Negro" in the United States." (4) The exhibit was comprised mostly of photographic images, yet it was shown in an area devoted to social science rather than art. Smith examines how racial identities were established in the visual codes of turn-of-the-century photography: "In order to fully understand the ways in which the photographs displayed in the American Negro exhibition participated in the formulation of visual codes of national belonging, one must locate the images within the historical legacy of representations which they both draw from and sig nificantly challenge." (5) An important component of the exhibit was a collection of anonymous photographs compiled by W. E. B. du Bois. The seemingly endless images of African Americans created an archive of character-types. Their identical format and lack of specific details regarding the identity of the sitter (the information was usually inscribed on the verso of the images) invited the public to look closely or gloss over sections at their discretion. The intent of the American government had been to show African Americans as thoroughly modern members of the western world. Importantly, the exhibit presented the progress made by African Americans in terms defined by the dominant white culture. Under these influences, my photograph is as much about the success of the U.S. military as it is about 1st Sergeant Johnson, aptly demonstrating the positive effects of discipline and hard work in a posed sense of pride.

Mathew Brady's "Illustrious Americans" series of the 1860s served as a model for the Paris Exposition images. Brady's photographs sought to extricate national character from a tense political climate, focusing on important contributions of certain individuals to the good of the country. At the turn of the century, after the Civil War and a decade after reconstruction, American photographers at the Paris Exposition were looking back to Brady's example. Remember that this was a period of heightened racial tension, continued debate over the so-called Negro question, Jim Crow segregation, African American disfranchisement and increased lynching. So du Bois strategically situates national identity within the terrain of racial identity and conflict. (6) The photographs he chose kept the language of the archive constant, for he dictated a singular format that would limit factors of difference. The unnamed photographers worked to dismantle the stereo-typed and caricatured images of African Americans produced in Ameri can popular culture at the time. (7) Pose was one important convention adopted for this purpose. By this means, national lineage, if not racial origin, was reinvented within the context of the Paris Exposition. The objective was to relocate roots: all men were symbolically reborn as Anglo-Saxon soldiers in order to substitute a national narrative based on differences for one shared by all soldiers in an ideologically homogeneous bloodline. Racial identities were erased in favor of a greater story of national belonging. The images suggested that the progress made by African Americans after the Civil War was rooted in the process of Americanization itself. Du Bois's portraits represent African Americans both as "Illustrious Americans" contemplating shared ideals and as distinct individuals.

With this additional information in mind, I still wonder about the specificity of my particular photograph. I pick it up and turn it over in my hands. I admire the stylish script as I once more read the inscription. I turn the card back over and see the image of the man standing upright in his military costume; he is holding an elegant black fountain pen with gold embellished accents in his right hand. The abyss of ethnographic otherness has been momentarily bridged. I hold the gift, I read the inscription, and I reflect on the thoughtfulness and care that went into the making and sharing of this photograph. Time has not silenced this object; it speaks, but now it speaks to me.

So where does all of this lead me regarding the question of photographic histories and the exclusion of vernacular images. In a way, it is easy to understand why vernacular photographs have been denied much recognition in traditional accounts of photography's history. Everyday photo-objects defy the type of hierarchical organization that typifies art historical practice. These objects tend to be produced in abundance by unknown hands. Yet these very traits tell us something fundamental about the existence and pervasive quality of both photography and ordinary social life throughout the last two centuries. This is an absence from the historical record that must be accounted for.

NOTES

(1.) Deborah Willis, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840-Present (New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2000).

(2.) Irit Rogoff, "Studying Visual Culture" in Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed., The Visual Culture Reader (New York: Routledge, 1998).

(3.) For discussions of the exchange value of photographs see John Tagg. "The Currency of the Photograph" in Victor Burgin, ed., Thinking Photography (London: Maximillian, 1982); Alan Sekula, "The Traffic in Photographs" in Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works 1973-1983 (Halifax: University of Nova Scotia Press, 1984).

(4.) Shawn Michelle Smith, American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 157.

(5.) Ibid., p. 158.

(6.) Ibid., p. 176.

(7.) W. E. B. du Bois, "The American Negro In Paris," in the American Monthly Review 22:5 (November 1900).

RELATED ARTICLE: INDICES

[1] Photographic card, c. 1909. The sitters, 1st Sgt. and Mrs. Robert Johnson, are identified by an inscription on the card.

[2] The reverse of card [1]. The inscription reads: "Merry Christmas, and compliments of 1st Sgt. And Mrs. Robert Johnson. To Qu. M. Sgt. And Mrs. W.L. Davis, Fort Ethen Allen V. T. December 1909."

JENNIFER M. KATANIC is a doctoral student in the Art History Department at the Graduate School and University Center, the City University of New York. She is a Graduate Teaching Fellow in the Art Department at the City College, New York.