Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America closed on May 31.  The exhibition was powerful and our visitors were invited to leave their thoughts, reflections, feelings, etc in notebooks placed at the end of the exhibition.  Some of our visitors wrote of their anger and sadness similar to a diary entry, some wrote poetry, and others reflected on their own personal lives, memories and stories of the horrific events depicted in Without Sanctuary.  Photos are powerful; they have the ability to invoke thought, emotion, and transport you to a place you have never been.  With a simple glance a photo can change your life and your understanding about the world around you.

Associated Press Image

The Associated Press recently published an article about a haunting 150-year-old photo found in a North Carolina attic.  Art historians believe it is an extremely rare Civil War-era photograph of children who were either slaves at the time or recently emancipated.

The photo shows a young black child named John, barefoot and wearing ragged clothes, perched on a barrel next to another unidentified young boy.  The photo is believed to have been taken in the early 1860s by Timothy O’Sullivan, an apprentice to famous 19th century photographer Mathew Brady.  O’Sullivan is famous in his own right – he took photos depicting the carnage of the Civil War and in 1862, O’Sullivan famously photographed a group of some of the first slaves liberated after Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

Take a moment and view the photo of the two young boys.  Have you heard the popular quote, “a photograph is memory in the raw”?  This photograph is raw – the institution of slavery victimized men, women, and children.

Keya Morgan, the New York collector who owns the photo said it best:

“This kid was abused and mistreated and people forgot about him.  He doesn’t even exist in history. And to know that there were a million children who were like him. I’ve never seen another photo like that that speaks so much for children.”