In 1850, when Dr. Robert W. Gibbes commissioned J. T. Zealy to make daguerreotypes of persons held in slavery in and around Columbia, South Carolina, for Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz to use in support of his theory that African people were a separate species, daguerreotypes were at the height of fashion.
Laura Wexler
Laura Wexler is the Charles H. Farnam Professor of Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale University. Her research and teaching center upon the social life of photographs in the United States. She is the author of numerous books, essays and articles, among them Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of US Imperialism, Pregnant Pictures, Candy/A Good and Spacious Land.
