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Podcast: New Books in Art
Episode: Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, “Enduring Truths: Sojourner’s Shadows and Substance” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)
Description: Runaway slave Sojourner Truth gained fame in the nineteenth century as an abolitionist, feminist, and orator and earned a living partly by selling photographic carte de visite portraits of herself at lectures and by mail. Cartes de visite, similar in format to calling cards, were relatively inexpensive collectibles that quickly became a new mode of mass communication. Despite being illiterate, Truth copyrighted her photographs in her name and added the caption “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance. Sojourner Truth.”
Featuring the largest collection of Truth’s photographs ever published, Enduring Truths: Sojourners Shadows and Substance (Univer...