Rare, Sensitive, Emotional CDV Portrait of an African Woman in Nomadic Dress for Sale

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Rare, Sensitive, Emotional CDV Portrait of an African Woman in Nomadic Dress For Sale

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Rare, Sensitive, Emotional CDV Portrait of an African Woman in Nomadic Dress:
$1699.00

Some photos are beautiful but say nothing. They offer very little in the way of knowing the world and understanding others. They aren't useful or instructive. They simply exist

to be admired. Other photos work over us differently. They're rough, raw and often difficult to absorb in the way they expose painful truths and make us question our assumptions. They bruise and batter us into knowledge. These photos can remind us of our shared humanity and enlarge our moral sympathies. Much like the photo above.

Now step back a moment. Think about your understanding of the world, and how it's been influenced and maybe even tempered by the hundreds of images you encounter daily or even the thousands of images you've encountered over a lifetime. Consider how fortunate and enlightened you are to be living in the 21st century--a century where the image reigns supreme. Where anyone and everyone with a phone is an instant photographer. Then take a good hard look at this image. Contemplate it. Look closely at this woman's face, at the way she seems to "know a few unspoken things." Her gaze is powerful, defiant, even vulnerable in the way it reveals the "still, sad music of her humanity." She holds nothing back. Imagine the shock it must have been for viewers to encounter this powerful woman in the 1860s.

I've had this extraordinary image in my life for almost 30 years. I've lived with it and thought deeply about my response to it, how it's affected me. I've always been struck by the way the photographer, in what amounts to a bold and strikingly original gesture, was able to collapse time and distance to make this woman present. To make her presence felt, right now, in June of 2024. To reveal something of her character is no small accomplishment. It's an emotional portrait. And it's remarkable. The one thing this photo isn't, is derivative. It's not influenced by the bulk of ethnographic images made of similar subjects, where photographers were always peering in voyeuristically, or content to create

what I call surface gloss: early stock images that are nice to look at but are empty of human warmth. Images that skate along the surface but never probe, never push past the obvious. They just show you the facts, only what was there, at the moment the photographer removed his lens cap.

This image cuts deeper. Much deeper. It's animated by an empathy unique to 19th century ethnographic photography. It's unmediated by the photographer's need to "show the other as exotic." It doesn't objectify this woman or point to her "otherness" but rather shows her struggling beneath the weight of whatever experience she's had to bear. And in doing so it reveals her humanity, the very quality that spans centuries and oceans and connects her to others, whether they're in Trenton or Tennessee or Timbuktu. It's a quality that spoke to me when I first acquired this image. And her humanity, it's unavoidable. It's etched on her face, in the way she carries herself, standing there swaddled inside but not overwhelmed by her clothes. I once thought she might be pregnant but now, years later I'm not so sure. I think maybe she's carrying food or other important items back to wherever she's headed. She looks directly at camera and, in what amounts to an act of pure defiance circa 1860, challenges the viewer to avert his or her gaze. And after 160 years this woman still breathes. She's still very much alive.

In a strange way this image prefigures the work of August Sander and his taxonomy of the German people and, to a lesser degree, Irving Penn's brilliant ethnographic work 100 years later in "Worlds in a Small Room."

Ultimately however, this photo must be taken on its own merits, that is, how it breaks with the approach and inherited orthodoxies of 19th century ethnographic portraiture and breathes life into its subject. It's an exquisitely wrought and beautifully accomplished portrait of a woman of flesh and bone and blood. It's also extraordinarily modern in its power to transform and enlarge our understanding of others. In this sense it has no equals.

I doubt you'll ever come across another CDV quite like this. It's priced accordingly.

Condition is as you see. The cardstock is rubbed and edges are rounded. Also there's a hole above the image where someone must have inserted a pushpin. Otherwise it's in good condition.