Well-composed sixth-plate ambrotype featuring a African American woman flanked by two young white children. Interracial portraits taken during the Civil War era are not common, and most, like this example, depict domestic servitude. Most likely enslaved, the young woman crosses her arms in her lap and looks directly at the camera operator. Her two white charges appear somewhat soft in focus, suggesting that both were wiggling when the picture was made. The photographer utilized a landscape format to enable all persons to fit comfortably within the frame, a somewhat unusual touch that allowed for a more candid scene of domestic life in the mid-nineteenth century. The nanny’s fine clothing may suggest an affiliation with a wealthy family.

Housed in a full thermoplastic case.









[Slavery, Agriculture, Books, Ephemera, Sugar] [African Americana, African-American History, Slave, Slavery, Abolition, Liberia] [Prints, Engravings, Lithographs, Ephemera]. [Slave, Abolition, African Americana, Civil War, Prints] [African American History, Black Americana] [Abraham Lincoln, Union, Confederate, Frederick Douglass, Abolitionist, 13th Amendment, Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Barack, Obama] [Daguerreotype, Ambrotype, Tintype, CDV, Albumen, carte-de-visite, Salt print, Cabinet Card]