Delia and Truth: a visual confrontation between two African American women

Abstract

In this thesis I investigate representations of slavery in photographs and how African American nudity has been used and abused in the middle of the nineteenth century in the United States of America. I focus my work on two major figures: Delia, a slave from South Carolina; and the abolitionist Sojourner Truth. I analyze the birth and the role of daguerreotypes and carte de visite in relation to the two figures involved and their history. I propone a theoretical interpretation of their images and their nudity based on Susan Sontag’s research, Alan Trachtenberg approach, Frederick Douglass’ lessons and other critics who analyzed the Black female body and its relationship to the white man. I examine Delia’s process of racial subjugation and her being undressed as a status of passivity, the idea of the photograph as a cage. I discuss Sojourner Truth’s self-disrobing as a public act made on the 1858 event in Indiana and her self-positioning in front of the camera as an act of independence. I propose modern revisitations of Delia’s daguerreotypes and Truth’s cartes de visite, to see how it is possible to render these photographs subjects of modern discussion despite their distance in time and how to do it without losing the meaning they had originally, and without being disrespectful. Many questions will be asked and left open which highlight the controversial nature of these photos and the still existing difficulty in facing topics such as race and slavery in today’s United States.