Photography History #16 – Sojourner Truth: giving a portrait her own voice
Look at the bottom of the card. Below the portrait, two lines of red lettering read: “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance.” The person in the image is not simply there to be recognised. The words connect her likeness to the work she wanted to support. We encounter a face and a public statement in the same object.
The photograph dates from 1864. It shows Sojourner Truth, an American speaker who worked for abolition and women’s rights. The photographer is unidentified. But the printed name and the copyright notice on the back belong to Truth. That difference between making the photograph and directing its use is central to this story.
The words beneath the picture
The “shadow” is the photographic likeness: a small paper version of a living person. “Substance” refers to the material life and work that selling the card could help sustain. Truth’s sentence describes photography while making a practical offer. It is printed immediately beneath the image, followed by her name in capital letters.
Crop away the lettering and we are left with a nineteenth-century studio portrait. Keep the mount, and the sitter’s own message becomes visible. The material edge of the photograph is not necessarily the edge of its meaning. In this case, typography belongs to the visual evidence.
The person in front of the camera
Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree in New York State, where she lived under slavery before becoming free. She later travelled as a speaker associated with antislavery activism and women’s rights. Public speaking, travel and organising all required resources. A small portrait that supporters could buy offered a practical way to help.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art says this portrait was made by an unknown photographer, probably in a studio in Detroit. “Probably” matters here: the location is not certain. Nor can we tell what Truth felt from her expression. The surviving records tell us more about how she chose to use the image than about her thoughts during the sitting.
A photograph made to travel
A carte de visite was a small photograph mounted on card. It could be kept in an album, sent with a letter or passed directly to another person. The photographic image on the Met’s example measures only about 8.5 by 5.4 centimetres. On a screen we usually see it much larger, which makes it easy to overlook the intimacy of the original object.
Truth sold photographic cards at lectures and by mail. A historical article from the U.S. Copyright Office cites prices between twenty-five and fifty cents. We cannot assume every surviving card circulated in precisely the same way. But the purpose is clear: a photograph let audiences recognise and support a speaker even when she was somewhere else.
What the camera shows
Truth sits against a plain background. Her pale cap and fringed shawl stand out against the dark dress. She holds knitting; a book and flowers rest on the small table beside her. The hands, the thread and the arrangement of objects form a quiet visual rhythm. Her eyes are directed towards the camera.
Notice how the yarn leads the eye from her lap towards the table. We do not know who chose every prop or how the sitting was directed. The museum associates the picture with the dignity of women’s work. That is an informed interpretation, not an eyewitness account of Truth’s private intention.
The photograph shows a person and the things around her. The printed name tells us who wanted to speak through the card.
Whose picture was it?
The card carries a copyright notice from 1864 in Sojourner Truth’s name. Research published by the U.S. Copyright Office records that she registered a claim connected with such prints on 16 February 1864, using the legal procedure then available for prints and engravings. The registration was a concrete step towards controlling and benefiting from distribution.
It did not make Truth the camera operator: the photographer is still unidentified. But it documents an effort by the person depicted to direct the use of her own likeness. The photographer, sitter and distributor need not be the same person. That distinction remains useful when we talk about portraits today.
Selling the shadow
Truth had lived in a society that denied her control over major parts of her own life. Her decision to sell portraits in her own name has meaning against that history. Proceeds could support her public work, while the copyright notice made a claim of ownership visible to anyone who handled the card.
A photographic likeness can travel when its subject cannot. People can keep it, recognise the face, show it to others and remember the encounter. Truth used that distance between the person and her “shadow” deliberately. We do not need modern branding language to understand the practical intelligence of that decision.
What does the card ask of us today?
Discussions of photographic truth often focus on cropping or manipulation. This portrait brings another question forward: who decides what a picture means, where it circulates and whose work it serves? We do not have to infer that Truth had a message from her facial expression. We can read the words printed directly beneath it.
In Photography History #15, on Gustave Le Gray, we looked at two negatives combined into one print. Truth’s portrait shifts our attention to the decisions made after exposure. What do we lose when we reproduce an old portrait without its printed border?
Artwork, sources and rights
Artwork: unidentified American photographer, Sojourner Truth, “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance,” 1864. Albumen silver print from glass negative, carte de visite. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession 2013.54. The museum marks this image Public Domain. The historical 1864 notice and the work’s present legal status are different facts.