Collect, Donate, Arrange, and Research: The Many Lives of the Baltimore Collection

The Baltimore Collection at the University of Delaware contains fifty-three portraits of predominantly black sitters from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Individuals sat for these rare vernacular photographs in studios and private spaces up and down the eastern seaboard, from Baltimore and Atlantic City to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Found amassed in a shoebox in its namesake Baltimore, an alumna of the University of Delaware donated the collection in 2001. After a year of conservation and research by a team of students, faculty, and library staff, The Baltimore Collection became accessible on ArtStor as of December 2017.

This paper argues that The Baltimore Collection provides new insights into black life as captured by photography in the nineteenth century. There are few photos of black sitters from the nineteenth century; Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Gordon, and the individuals from the Agassiz photographs are the primary subjects in this field of research. The Baltimore Collection, with its portrayals of black and white sitters outside of the system of slavery, adds depth and complexity to a historical narrative largely driven by photographs of the enslaved. The photographs in this collection led many lives, from their production and personal use to their collection, preservation, and rebirth in the archive. Using a selection of photographs from The Baltimore collection, this paper analyzes each stage in the life cycle of the photograph to consider how the object, the collector, the archivist, and the researcher each serve a distinct yet interconnected role in the production of knowledge about the past.