Agassiz photographed enslaved people nude as scientific specimens on a plantation

Evidence

The article mentioned fifteen daguerreotypes. Papa Renty’s was the first image that I saw. The second one was of “Alfred Foulah, belonging to I. Lomas, Columbia, S.C.” Papa Renty’s portrait was face-on, and while he was naked from the waist up, it appeared he had cloth wrapped around his lower torso. Alfred was stripped naked. His image was so startling that I had to avert my eyes: it was a side view of an older man, perhaps in his thirties or forties, looking straight ahead, so the viewer only sees his profile. His stomach is slightly distended, his shoulders slumped. There was another image to the right of that, of his nude backside. I found it so violent and so upsetting to see this man, father, brother being viewed like a scientific specimen. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 167

Categorization

• XREF: Ties directly to the reparations/property-law thesis across the book; also echoes the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ essay’s theme of dress/uncovering, though on the forced side rather than the moral-panic side.