Photography of African Slavery in Modern Iran (1840s-1960s)

It all started with a conversation about photography in Qajar Iran and how the concept of African slavery could be documented through that medium by King, his court photographs and other slaveholders. Then there was another conversation about representation and presentation; and yet another conversation about the archive and the photographic object, about slavery and memory, personal and collective; and a conversation about photographs of the past and their historical, social and cultural values today. This paper explores the ways in which African slaves were represented, documented, debated, and asserted in a wide range of photographs from the 1840s through the 1960s. We see these images as historically situated representations, created mostly by slaveholders. We also view them as powerful images with enduring meanings and legacies.