Reviewed by:

• Visualizing Equality: African American Rights and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century by Aston Gonzalez
• Amanda Brickell Bellows

Antislavery images played a critical role in garnering support for the U.S. abolitionist movement, but scholars have not paid adequate attention to the visual culture produced by African American artists and activists during the nineteenth century. In his book Visualizing Equality: African American Rights and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century, Aston Gonzalez concentrates on [End Page 334] the work of "understudied and nearly forgotten artists" who "produced images that challenged stereotypes of African Americans" from approximately 1830 to 1900 (p. 2). Drawing from a wide range of sources in American and British archives, Gonzalez surveys and analyzes the visual landscape of the nineteenth century. His work not only reveals how African American activists created art in the service of campaigns to "realize racial equality" and "normalize and commemorate black achievement in the face of immense challenges," but also explores its reception by diverse audiences (p. 6).

Gonzalez is an associate professor of history at Salisbury University, where he specializes in nineteenth-century African American history, politics, and visual culture. Gonzalez situates his scholarship at the intersection of the study of the abolitionist movement and the production of visual culture. His goal is to "show how African Americans themselves crafted images to advance racial equality in the nineteenth century" (p. 5). Technological advancements produced new types of media, including daguerreotypes, illustrated newspapers, lithographs, and moving panoramas. African American activists and artists represented Black life in these mass-oriented materials in an effort to challenge the racist depictions that circulated widely in the antebellum period. Gonzalez studies images of African Americans in these sources and gleans their popular reception through an examination of exhibition reviews, newspapers, and correspondence. Advertisements, pamphlets, and petitions also illuminate the "context for discerning black artists' numerous intended audiences and the vehicles through which viewers encountered their work" (p. 8).

In seven engaging chapters, Gonzalez explores the art, activism, and sociopolitical networks of different African American artists to show how they "tasked themselves with producing and disseminating knowledge about blackness that renounced dominant stereotypes of black people" (p. 11). Chapter 1 covers Robert Douglass Jr., a portraitist and antislavery activist in Philadelphia whose abolitionist imagery circulated extensively as lithographs during the 1830s. Gonzalez moves northward to New York City in chapter 2, where Patrick Henry Reason created engravings such as the Supplicant Slave (1835) and dignified portraits of formerly enslaved men that "heightened the visibility of the antislavery movement" (p. 53). Chapter 3 sheds light on the activist work of Douglass and Reason during the 1840s, when both men produced artwork intended to advance Black rights and challenge discrimination. The fourth chapter examines the production and reception of moving panoramas by James Presley Ball, William Wells Brown, and Henry Box Brown that displayed slavery's atrocities to audiences, while the fifth chapter assesses the photography of Augustus Washington, a daguerreotypist who moved from Connecticut to Liberia and whose work promoted colonization by "signal[ing] the possibilities for African Americans in a black republic" (p. 146). The book's final two chapters move into the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, assessing the ways wartime and postemancipation artistic production shaped understandings of African American military and political contributions between 1861 and 1877.

Visualizing Equality illuminates the central role that African American artists played in advancing the goals of the antislavery movement through [End Page 335] cultural production. This deeply researched book stands as a major contribution to the literature on abolitionism and visual culture in the nineteenth century.

审核人：

• 视觉平等：十九世纪的非裔美国人权利和视觉文化，阿斯顿·冈萨雷斯（Aston Gonzalez）
• 阿曼达·布里克尔（Amanda Brickell）波纹管

反奴隶制图像在获得美国废奴运动的支持中起着至关重要的作用，但是学者们对19世纪非裔美国艺术家和活动家所产生的视觉文化并未给予足够的重视。阿斯顿·冈萨雷斯（Aston Gonzalez）在他的著作《视觉平等：十九世纪的非裔美国人的权利和视觉文化》中专着[End Page 334]大约1830年至1900年间“研究不足并被遗忘的艺术家”的作品“产生了挑战非裔美国人刻板印象的图像”（第2页）。冈萨雷斯从美国和英国的档案馆中收集了大量资料，对19世纪的视觉景观进行了调查和分析。他的作品不仅揭示了非洲裔美国激进主义者如何通过运动来实现“实现种族平等”，“面对巨大挑战来规范和纪念黑人成就”的艺术创作，而且还探索了不同受众的接受程度（第6页） 。

冈萨雷斯（Gonzalez）是索尔兹伯里大学（Salisbury University）历史学的副教授，他专门研究19世纪的非洲裔美国历史，政治和视觉文化。冈萨雷斯将其奖学金设在废奴运动与视觉文化产生的研究交汇处。他的目标是“展示非裔美国人自己如何制作图像来促进19世纪的种族平等”（第5页）。科技的进步催生了新型媒体，包括浮雕版画，插图报纸，石版画和动态全景图。非裔美国活动家和艺术家在这些大众化的材料中代表黑人生活，以挑战在战前时期广泛流传的种族主义描述。冈萨雷斯研究了这些来源的非裔美国人的图像，并通过检查展览评论，报纸和信件来收集他们的受欢迎的接待。广告，小册子和请愿书也阐明了“辨别黑人艺术家众多目标受众的背景以及观众观看作品的媒介”（第8页）。

在七个引人入胜的章节中，冈萨雷斯探索了不同非洲裔美国艺术家的艺术，行动主义和社会政治网络，以展示他们如何“以产生和传播关于黑人的知识为己任，从而摒弃了黑人的主要定型观念”（第11页）。第1章介绍了费城的肖像主义者和反奴隶制活动家小罗伯特·道格拉斯（Robert Douglass Jr.），他的废奴主义意象在1830年代作为石版画广泛传播。冈萨雷斯在第2章中北移至纽约市，在那里帕特里克·亨利·雷因（Patrick Henry Reason）创作了版画，如恳求者奴隶（1835年）和曾被奴役的人的端庄肖像，“提高了反奴隶运动的知名度”（第53页）。第三章阐明了道格拉斯和理性主义者在1840年代的激进主义作品，当时两人都创作了旨在促进黑人权利和挑战歧视的艺术品。第四章考察了詹姆斯·普雷斯利·鲍尔（James Presley Ball），威廉·威尔斯·布朗（William Wells Brown）和亨利·博克斯·布朗（Henry Box Brown）向观众展示奴隶制暴行的动感全景的制作和接收，而第五章则评估了从康涅狄格州移居到利比里亚的达格特典型主义者奥古斯都·华盛顿的摄影作品他的工作通过“发信号通知黑人共和国中非裔美国人的可能性”来促进殖民化（第146页）。该书的最后两章进入内战和重建时代，

视觉化的平等阐明了非洲裔美国艺术家在通过[End Page 335]文化生产来促进反奴隶制运动的目标中所发挥的核心作用。这本深入研究的书对19世纪废奴主义和视觉文化文学做出了重大贡献。