Too early to say for certain, but some serious questions need to be answered about that supposedly rare picture of slave children found in a Charlotte attic.
Recall that the UPoR gave the breathless AP account of the pic heavy play — and then followed up with a didactic editorial on Sunday. All the coverage assumed that the picture was a newly discovered Matthew Brady print of slave children in the South pre or circa the Civil War. But this account immediately caught the eye of Carolinas blogger Cedar Posts, who noted that the pic could merely depict Southern poverty across decades, into the 20th century. Posts also pointed out that there was a heavy trade in such pictures as postcards well into the 20th century.
The upshot was that you’d better be damn certain of the origin of such an image before declaring it to be a direct representation of some slave child’s life in the 1860s — which of course is exactly what the AP and the UPoR rushed to do.
Now Posts is back with evidence that the image is not what it was claimed to be. Based on a New York Public Library digital image catalog and an eBay entry — how is that for sourcing? — the image appears to have been in wide circulation in the late 19th and early 20th century as part of a stereoscope collection of scenes of the South. The eBay sale even describes the collection as representing Savannah in the 1870s, which is quite a bit different than the Carolinas of the 1850s and 1860s given the slavery meme which the AP and the UPoR — Haunting photo of young slaves can open our eyes — constructed around the picture.
But what is most interesting to me is the reality that newly freed blacks of the 1870s could be as materially impoverished as slaves of the 1850s. Is that what the AP and the UPoR were trying to downplay? This is undeniably an image of grinding poverty — isn’t that enough?
Even more mysterious — how is it all the supposed experts on images of the Civil War interviewed by the AP had never seen the picture before? It is in the flippin’ NYPL, you can buy a copy on eBay. Am I missing something subtle here? Or is this a case of a picture so conclusively fitting the received narrative — as the academics would say — that no one bothered to check for accuracy?
Well, Cedar Posts did — did the job of dozens of reporters, editors, scholars, and experts. What we are left with is an open question — let’s see if anyone steps up to try to answer it.
Update: Guess I should say that I got tired of waiting on a response from the editors of UPoR, but they were presented with the evidence unearthed by Cedar Posts via email several hours ago. So far, crickets.
Update II: A USA Today blog entry spurred the UPoR to roll this front-teased story on doubts about the photo.
But this account still side-steps the vital question of when the photo was taken — as well as somewhat misrepresenting the USA Today story by quoting the guy who bet $30K on the photo as saying the “moronic” paper merely quoted an eBay seller. Not true. USA Today tracked down the same Smithsonian expert who vouched for the photo and got something of a retraction. To wit:
Will Stapp, a photographic historian and founding curator of the National Portrait Gallery’s photographs department at the Smithsonian Institution, was quoted by the AP as calling the photograph a “very difficult and poignant piece of American history.”
He nows says that he believes the photo is from around 1865 to 1866 and that the boys, while apparently free, were almost certainly born into slavery.
But he says he is now unsure about the photographer. He says he does not believe it was one of Brady’s photographers, Tim O’Sullivan. Most likely, he says, it was Wilson (whose photo is in the New York Public Library) or a photographer named Coonley, since Wilson was known to have bought up Coonley’s work.
“Nothing is absolutely cut and dried,”Stapp says.”We have lost so many records, even though we have some information, there is is not guarante what we know or think we know is true.”
“I took it at face value,” he says. “But I should have known.”
But then the UPoR doubles back to Sapp to get this:
On Tuesday, he also disputed claims that the photo is false.
“The photograph is real. And the photograph is authentic,” Sapp told the Observer. “Who took it, that’s another issue altogether.”
Sapp said the photograph could have been taken by any one of four or five Civil War-era photographers Brady hired who embedded themselves with Union troops. He said he’s confident that at some point Brady’s studio handled the photo.
Swapping and selling negatives was common, Sapp said, and without more information, the person who took the photo remains a mystery.
So. Sapp tells USA Today that the slavery photo by Matthew Brady cannot be authenticated as a slavery photo by Matthew Brady. But then tells the UPoR that the photo is “real” and “authentic.” Ahem. Guys.
Real and authentic what?
If you are confused, join the club.
