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Figure 1

Citation

photographer Unknown Photographer Photographer. “Abraham, Slave Master.” late 1850s. Cowan’s Auctions, Inc., Cincinnati, OH. Mirror of Race, 11 Feb. 2021, mirrorofrace.bc.edu/items/show/125. Accessed 21 Nov. 2024.

Title

Abraham, Slave Master

Subject

Abraham, Slave Master

Creator

photographer Unknown Photographer Photographer

Date

late 1850s

Type

Studio Portrait

Identifier

Figure 1

Rights Holder

Cowan’s Auctions, Inc., Cincinnati, OH

Original Format

Ambrotype

Factual Commentary

The man identified only as “Abraham, Slave Master” holds a whip clenched tightly in his fist. This is an “occupational” portrait, one where the sitter poses with an object symbolic of his profession. Abraham was probably a slave overseer, or perhaps a slave trader, not a more refined and aristocratic owner of a large and old-family plantation. But the whip is symbolic of more than the job of slave driver: it embodies the fear, the punishment, the pain, the violence that was necessary to enforce slavery’s structure of domination.