Jennifer Davis Carey: Redemption

REDEMPTION: Jennifer Davis Carey
Daguerreotypes re-imagined in enamel and compassion
The exhibit Redemption is well named. Carey has taken 1850 daguerreotypes of enslaved people commissioned by Louis Agassiz, a Harvard professor and given them dignity. As part of his studies to prove that Blacks were a separate and inferior creation, Agassiz contracted with Joseph T. Zealy to create daguerreotypes of ‘African types’, either people born on the continent or their American born offspring. They depict people held in bondage on agricultural work camps in Columbia, South Carolina. The images of the enslaved people, Fassena, Jack, Drana, Renty, and Delia posed unclad and as biological specimens are shocking. They bear witness to the pain, exploitation, and tragedy that visited these subjects as an accompaniment to America’s Original Sin.
Carey has recreated these images in enamel and given each subject clothes in two versions: one work depicting each person in the Victorian clothes of the era in America, and another showing them in African dress. It is an act of respect long overdue. As part of the exhibit Carey has brought images of the original series of daguerreotypes, showing Fassena, Jack, Drana, Renty and Delia unclothed, but has put them in a special box. If you want to witness these images, you must make the decision to open the box yourself to see.
Whatever documentation there is for each enslaved person is included in this historically accurate exhibit. For example:
Jack was Drana’s father and is listed in records as a driver, an enslaved person who supervised the work of field hands. He is appears in records of the First Baptist Church of Columbia, South Carolina. Notes accompanying the photograph list him as “Guinea” though the plantation register indicates that he is Mandingo (Mandinka, an ethnic group of Mali, Guinea, Gambia, and the Ivory Coast). His last record is in probate documents from 1852 that settled the estate of the man who held him captive.
Drana was the daughter of Jack. Very little is known about this woman, and she does not appear in the probate records that settled the Benjamin F. Taylor estate in 1852. This suggests that previously she was either sold, died, or ran.
Since their discovery in 1976 at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography, the daguerreotypes have been the subject of controversy—raising questions about ‘race science’, ownership, consent, and the role of the academy in creating or dismantling pernicious stereotypes. In 2019, descendants of Renty Taylor, one of the enslaved, sued Harvard for damages and ownership the images. Harvard prevailed and did not return the images but did release them to the public domain.
The altered images in this exhibit humanize the subjects by clothing them and inviting the viewer to consider their faces, attire, and demeanor, and to redefine their own relationship to Renty, Delia, Jack, Drana, and Fassena, and to this chapter in our shared history.
Redemption is on exhibit March 3 to May 2, 2022 at Salmon Falls Gallery in Shelburne Falls, MA. There will be an artist’s talk and reception Saturday, March 12, from 2-4pm. For more information about this exhibit visit SalmonFallsGallery.com or call 413-625-9833. The Gallery is open Thursday through Sunday, 11am – 5pm.