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Subject Truth, Sojourner, 1799-1883
  • A carte-de-visite bust-length portrait of Sojourner Truth with the text [I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance./Sojourner Truth.] beneath the image. Truth is depicted wearing a light colored shawl and bonnet which is tied under her chin. She is slightly turned towards the proper right side of the photograph. The verso reads [Entered according to the act of Congress/in the year 1864, by SOJOURNER TRUTH,/in the Clerk's Office, of the US District/Court for the Eastern District of Mich.].
    Still image

    Carte-de-visite portrait of Sojourner Truth

    A carte-de-visite bust-length portrait of Sojourner Truth with the text [I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance./Sojourner Truth.] beneath the image. Truth is depicted wearing a light colored shawl and bonnet which is tied under her chin. She is slightly turned towards the proper right side of the photograph. The verso reads [Entered according to the act of Congress/in the year 1864, by SOJOURNER TRUTH,/in the Clerk's Office, of the US District/Court for the Eastern District of Mich.].
    Date Created
    1864
    Copyright
    NO COPYRIGHT - UNITED STATES
    A carte-de-visite bust-length portrait of Sojourner Truth with the text [I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance./Sojourner Truth.] beneath the image. Truth is depicted wearing a light colored shawl and bonnet which is tied under her chin. She is slightly turned towards the proper right side of the photograph. The verso reads [Entered according to the act of Congress/in the year 1864, by SOJOURNER TRUTH,/in the Clerk's Office, of the US District/Court for the Eastern District of Mich.].
  • Summary: Runaway slave Sojourner Truth gained fame in the nineteenth century as an abolitionist, feminist, and orator and earned a living partly by selling photographic carte de visite portraits of herself at lectures and by mail. Cartes de visite, similar in format to calling cards, were relatively inexpensive collectibles that quickly became a new mode of mass communication. Despite being illiterate, Truth copyrighted her photographs in her name and added the caption “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance. Sojourner Truth.” Featuring the largest collection of Truth’s photographs ever published, Enduring Truths is the first book to explore how she used her image, the press, the postal service, and copyright laws to support her activism and herself. Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby establishes a range of important contexts for Truth’s portraits, including the strategic role of photography and copyright for an illiterate former slave; the shared politics of Truth’s cartes de visite and federal banknotes, which were both created to fund the Union cause; and the ways that photochemical limitations complicated the portrayal of different skin tones. Insightful and powerful, Enduring Truths shows how Truth made her photographic portrait worth money in order to end slavery—and also became the strategic author of her public self.
    Text

    Enduring truths : Sojourner's shadows and substance

    Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo
    Summary: Runaway slave Sojourner Truth gained fame in the nineteenth century as an abolitionist, feminist, and orator and earned a living partly by selling photographic carte de visite portraits of herself at lectures and by mail. Cartes de visite, similar in format to calling cards, were relatively inexpensive collectibles that quickly became a new mode of mass communication. Despite being illiterate, Truth copyrighted her photographs in her name and added the caption “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance.
    Date Issued or Published
    2015
    Copyright
    IN COPYRIGHT
    Summary: Runaway slave Sojourner Truth gained fame in the nineteenth century as an abolitionist, feminist, and orator and earned a living partly by selling photographic carte de visite portraits of herself at lectures and by mail. Cartes de visite, similar in format to calling cards, were relatively inexpensive collectibles that quickly became a new mode of mass communication. Despite being illiterate, Truth copyrighted her photographs in her name and added the caption “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance.
  • A portrait of Sojourner Truth.
    Still image

    Sojourner Truth

    Randall Studio, active 1865 - 1875?
    A portrait of Sojourner Truth.
    Date Created
    1865/1875
    Copyright
    NO COPYRIGHT - UNITED STATES
    A portrait of Sojourner Truth.
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