Explore the Oldest Digitized Photos from the Schomburg Center
Portrait of a woman (Mrs. Collins), 1840-49.
Schomburg Center Photographs and Prints Division. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 58504638
The Schomburg Center's Photographs and Prints Division houses more than 500,000 photographs, lithographs, and engravings by and about Black people in the U.S., Africa, and the wider African Diaspora. Recently, 17 daguerreotype portraits in the Division dating from the 1840s to 1850s, most of them featuring Black subjects, were digitized and are now available to view online. They represent the oldest photos in the Schomburg Center’s Photographs and Prints Division. See them in the Digital Collections here.
Portrait of a young woman with book in lap, 1840-49.
Schomburg Center Photographs and Prints Division. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 58504623
Daguerreotypes were invented in 1839, and are one of the oldest and first widely available photographic technology. The format was popular in the 1840s and 1850s until the invention of the ambrotype. The images in the Schomburg Center's Daguerreotype Collection depict individuals, most of whom are Black, in a posed portrait style. There are three images which are credited to a daguerreotypist, one from C. Evans, Philadelphia and two by Augustus Washington. Both daguerreotypes credited to Washington portray white subjects.
Augustus Washington (circa 1820-1875) was a Black daguerreotypist and photographer. Washington enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1843, and learned to make daguerreotypes to help fund his education. Washington left Dartmouth the following year, and moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where he opened his own daguerreotype studio and taught photography to Black students. Washington emigrated to Libera in 1853, and opened a daguerreotype studio in Monrovia. He ultimately left photography for a career in politics, serving in both the Liberian House of Representatives and Senate, as well as Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1865 to 1869.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, one of The New York Public Library’s renowned research libraries, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.