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Augustus Washington, Daguerreotypist

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Chancy Brown, Sixth Plate Daguerreotype by Augustus Washington, between 1856 and 1860.
Chancy Brown. Sixth Plate Daguerreotype by Augustus Washington, between 1856 and 1860. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3g06772

Unidentified woman, probably a member of the Urias McGill family
Unidentified Woman, Probably a Member of the Urias McGill Family. Sixth Plate Daguerreotype by Augustus Washington, 1855. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3g03937

Strange as it may appear, whatever may be a colored man’s natural capacity and literary attainments, I believe that, as soon as he leaves the academic halls to mingle in the only society he can find in the United States, unless he be a minister or lecturer, he must and will retrograde.
–Augustus Washington, letter to the New York Tribune, 1851

Imagine you are a young man of mixed-race heritage (African-American father and Asian mother) in 1840s America who wants to attend college but lacks the financial resources. What might you do to bring in money to support yourself? Augustus Washington (born 1820/1821) decided to try his hand at the new art of daguerreotype photography. Little did he realize that he was making a major career decision which would affect the rest of his life!

In the winter of 1843, Augustus Washington was enrolled in his freshman year at Dartmouth College when he turned to photography to earn some income. He soon left Dartmouth, and within five years had a thriving studio in Hartford, Connecticut. By 1850, he was a prosperous photographer and a husband. For many a man, the story might have ended there with the coda that he lived happily ever after. But, for Washington, it was just one chapter in an amazing man’s story.

In the 1850s, Washington realized that for the foreseeable future, despite his talents and accomplishments, he would be relegated in America to second-class citizenry at best, and possibly much worse in the climate of fear during the era of the Fugitive Slave Act. He began to consider emigration and decided to settle in Liberia under the auspices of the American Colonization Society. In November 1853, with his wife and two small children in tow, he sailed for Monrovia, Liberia.

With money saved from his business in Hartford, Washington set up a daguerreotype studio in Monrovia. In the two examples above, Chancy Brown the Liberian Senate’s sergeant at arms, is one of several portraits Washington took of Liberian legislators and executives. On the right is an unidentified woman, likely a member of the Urias McGill family, a rarity in the fact that it portrays a woman of color and interesting as she holds a daguerreotype case in her lap. In both portraits, it is striking how the subjects gaze seemingly unblinking, looking directly at the camera without an iota of self-consciousness or discomfort apparent.

Ever industrious, between bouts of malaria, Washington was soon a merchant and a landlord as well as a photographer. Then, he turned his attention to farming sugarcane and parlayed ten acres into a thriving 1,000-acre farm twenty miles upriver from Monrovia. He also found time to serve in the Liberian legislature, twice as a representative (where he was elected speaker) and one term as a senator. Upon his 1875 death, the African Repository noted his many accomplishments and prominent status concluding that “Nothing could induce him to return to this country [America], having acquired a handsome property and freedom and a home in his ancestral land.” How different might his story have been had he never picked up the camera!

Learn More:

Bibliography: Works Consulted

Johnson, Carol. “Faces of Freedom: Portraits from the American Colonization Society Collection” in The Daguerreian Annual, 1996. Pittsburgh: The Daguerreian Society, 1997, pages 265-278.

Shumard, Ann M. A Durable Memento: Portraits by Augustus Washington, African American Daguerreotypist.  Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, National Portrait Gallery, 1999.

Willis, Deborah. Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000, pages 3-10.

Comments (10)

  1. I always get a good feeling inside when I learn something interesting, especially since I love photography. These are beautiful to look at and I am thankful that this bit of history came my way. You just never learned in grade school, JHS or HS about the accomplishments of minorities. Thank you!

    • You’re welcome! Glad you enjoyed the post. Thanks for taking the time to write!

  2. Thanks, LOC! This was so interesting. I love the great back story and the two wonderful examples of his work, too!

  3. Thanks for this nifty report, Jeff!! You sent me to the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/) for another look and I ended up comparing the color reproduction you used (see also http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3g00000/3g03000/3g03900/3g03937v.jpg) to what may be an earlier black-and-white reproduction (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3d00000/3d01000/3d01900/3d01949v.jpg). Both are scanned from copy photos, one a color transparency and the other a black-and-white negative, possibly made years apart. It is striking how much these two reproductions differ: many spots that appear to be on the surface of the daguerreotype in the color version are absent from the black-and-white. Is this due to differences in the way the two copy-photos were produced, or did the natural aging of the daguerreotype cause the changes?

    • Thanks for the comment, Carl. I’m glad to report that there is a happy explanation for the difference. The color image was made first, a few years before our conservators worked on this daguerreotype. After conservation treatment it was considerably improved in every way (including cleaner!) and that is when the black-and-white image was made.

  4. The story gave me goosebumps. I so appreciate the simplicity and courage this story portrays. Besides being a lively story, about a life driven my clear choices, it is so cinematic! The story of August Washington is such a great narrative, surpassing the narrow and contrived world-view of, say, “Django Unchained.” How many stories like this have been buried? Thanks.

  5. Aware of Mr. Washington, I am searching for information about another Hartford Dageurreotypist, John Wells Stancliff (1814-1891).
    JWS was also a Marine Artist and quite active in the Hartford Art world.
    I collect the paintings of JWS as well.
    Thank you.
    John

  6. Aware of Mr. Washington, I am researching another Hartford Dageurreotypist John Wells Stancliff. Little seems to be written about JWS and I hope to write about his interesting life.
    Thank you,
    John

  7. Are there any photos of the photographer himself? Perhaps, I overlooked something, but I can’t seem to find any image identified as Augustus Washington the man and photographer.

  8. Thank you for the research. I just learned about another important American photographer. What an amazing renaissance man that lived in interesting times. I live in Hartford and I wonder if the local museums have his work in the permanent collection? I will have to ask.

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