- The Scourged Back
- Gordon Under Medical Inspection
Sheet: 3 5/8 × 2 3/16 in. (9.2 × 5.6 cm)
Mount: 4 × 2 3/8 in. (10.1 × 6.1 cm)
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After repeatedly being beaten and whipped at a Louisiana plantation, this man escaped from slavery and fled to a Union camp at Baton Rouge in March 1863, where a camp photographer took a series of photographs that graphically demonstrated the brutality he had endured. The image was copied by other photographers and reproduced in Harper’s Weekly, prompting one contemporary commentator at the time to write, “This card-photograph should be multiplied by the hundred thousand, and scattered over the states.” Even today, it remains powerful proof of the inhumanity of America’s antebellum slavery system.
Provenance[Swann Auction Galleries, New York, Printed & Manuscript African Americana, March 25, 2021, Lot 7]; purchased by MFAH, 2021.
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