How W.E.B. Du Bois combined photographs and infographics to communicate the everyday realities of Black lives and the inequities of race in America
At the 1900 Paris Exposition the pioneering sociologist and activist W.E.B. Du Bois presented an exhibit representing the progress of African Americans since the abolition of slavery. In striking graphic visualisations and photographs (taken by mostly anonymous photographers) he showed the changing status of a newly emancipated people across America and specifically in Georgia, the state with the largest Black population. This beautifully designed book reproduces the photographs alongside the revolutionary graphic works for the first time, and includes a marvelous essay by two celebrated art historians, Jacqueline Francis and Stephen G. Hall.
Du Bois' hand-drawn charts, maps and graphs represented the achievements and economic conditions of African Americans in radically inventive forms, long before such data visualization was commonly used in social research. Their clarity and simplicity seems to anticipate the abstract art of the Russian constructivists and other modernist painters to come. The photographs were drawn from African American communities across the United States. Both the photographers and subjects are mostly anonymous. They show people engaged in various occupations or posing formally for group and studio portraits. Elegant and dignified, they refute the degrading stereotypes of Black people then prevalent in white America. Du Bois' exhibit at the Paris Exposition continues to resonate as a powerful affirmation of the equal rights of Black Americans to lives of freedom and fulfilment. Black Lives 1900 captures this singular work.
American sociologist, historian, author, editor and activist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was the most influential Black civil rights activist of the first half of the 20th century. He was a protagonist in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, and his 1903 bookThe Souls of Black Folk remains a classic and a landmark of African American literature.
Industry Reviews
"This is an extraordinary book - an arrestingly beautiful combination of photographs and graphics."--Margaret Busby
I find this lush and exquisitely produced book essential to my understanding of a historical event that did much to change my perception of DuBois, and his brilliant expansiveness. It's marvelous to have this "lost" material between covers now, and forever.--Hilton Als "Author of "White Girls" and staff writer at The New Yorker"
These charts and graphics, and photos, from more than a century ago, have deep resonance today amid the Black Lives Matter movement and the vitriol of its opponents.--Patrick T. Reardon "Third Coast Review"
A beautifully illustrated volume based on [...] the Paris Exposition of 1900 that presented Black Americans in their own words and images.--David A. Taylor "Washington Post"
Black Lives 1900: W. E. B. Du Bois at the Paris Exposition beautifully weaves together Du Bois's groundbreaking graphic visualizations with photographs of Black Americans post-slavery, to tell the little-known story of The American Negro Exhibit at the 1900 World's Fair...this book is a timely reminder of what Black Americans can achieve in the face of oppression, as well as a somber reminder that even though "the twentieth century" is over, "the problem of the color line" is not yet solved.--Krystle Harrell "Cartographic Perspectives"
With an assortment of hand-drawn charts, maps, graphs, and photographs taken by anonymous photographers, he shed light on the status of newly emancipated people across America--a powerful affirmation of the equal rights of Black Americans.--Lucy Rees "Galerie"
A striking selection of photographs, cutting-edge infographics, books, pamphlets, and unique objects illustrating African-America achievements in the years following emancipation. DuBois' graphs of Black accomplishment, not intended as art, prefigure the movement towards abstract art by decades, though they went unrecognised as such until recent times.--Miss Rosen "Dazed"
A Visual Record of Black Lives, Four Decades After Emancipation.--Jovonna Jones "Aperture"
contains reproduction of the images taken by mostly anonymous photographers showing the changing status of a newly emancipated people across America.--Charles Caesar "Galerie"
A handsome new book that tells a lesser-known but fascinating story about the 1900 fair: the staging of the American Negro Exhibit at the grand Palace of Social Economy.--Sukhdev Sandhu "Guardian"
Focussing on the set of 63 infographics Du Bois presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition, [the book] shows the pioneering graphs, charts and maps Du Bois developed with a team of African American students from his sociology laboratory at Atlanta University to radically challenge racism and the arguments behind white supremacy.--Laura Snoad "It's Nice That"
Rothenstein seeks to emphasize the relevance of Du Bois's work through juxtaposition: materials from the original exhibition are interspersed with excerpts from Du Bois's own writings and more... These interstitial selections seem intended to conjure a continuum of black voices, or perhaps to argue that the insurmountable prejudices of Du Bois's day linger in the present.--Hua Hsu "New Yorker"
Shattered myths about Black America...--Jacqueline Francis "LitHub"
Thematic and poetic pairings... By recovering [W.E.B. Du Bois's] mode of presentation--illustrating impersonal forces besides portraits of individuals, their homes and their workplaces--this volume gives further evidence, if such is still needed, of Du Bois's rich dialectical method.--Ciaran Finlayson "Bookforum"
