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African American Studies: Graphic Arts

African American Portraits, 1860s-1880s

In 2010, Princeton University Library’s Graphic Arts Collection acquired a collection of African American Portraits, 1860s-1880s.   These early photographs of men, women, and children were developed using the tintype process patented in the United States by Hamilton Smith in 1856.  Nearly all the names of the sitters are unknown with the exception of one portrait of “African–American child, Sally Rice.”  Names of photographers are unknown.