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Photography on the Color Line
Photography on the Color Line
Book
Duke University Press
2004

This book is a study of race and visual culture focused on the remarkable photographs W. E. B. Du Bois compiled for the American Negro Exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition. I read these photographs of African Americans in relation to other visual archives invested in defining "race" at the turn of the century, and situate them in relation to Du Bois's own literary and sociological work at the time. Through this analysis I reveal Du Bois's antiracist visual strategies and argue that he was an early visual theorist of race and racism.