Who Owns Pre-Civil War Daguerreotypes Of Enslaved Ancestors?

A few years before the US War Between the States, Joseph Zealy, a photographer in Charleston, S.C., was commissioned to make photographs of several slaves owned by Dr. Robert Gibbs as part of a study of racial characteristics for Louis Agassiz, a Swiss scientist who was developing a theory of polygenesis. The slaves were photographed as specimens — front, back — not as humans sitting for portraits. The women were stripped to the waist, some of the men were completely nude.

Long story short, in 1976, editorial assistant Lorna Condon stumbled upon those Daguerreotypes. Carrie Mae Weems later gained access to them and used them in a project she called “From Here I Saw What Happened And I Cried”. (You may have seen some of those at the Portland Art Museum previously.) Later, while doing family history research, Tamara Lanier found the plates and recognized relatives. Then, in a lengthy legal battle with Harvard University, Lanier claimed “wrongful seizure, possession and expropriation” of images that she believes are of two of her ancestors.

A judge heard arguments in court in October of 2020. Searching the internet, I could not find a report stating that the judge had ruled on the matter.

Find the full story here.

Renty, (detail) by J.T. Zealy, 1850
Commissioned by Louis Agassiz (d. 1873), photographed by Joseph T. Zealy (d. 1893). - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81498772