ABSTRACT
The Scourged Back depicts a black man, undressed from neck to waist; his back, covered by a gruesome mass of rope-like scars, faces the camera (Figure 1.1). The original photograph was produced by the photography fi rm of McPherson and Oliver of Baton Rouge in 1863. It was then reproduced as a carte de visite by McAllister and Brothers of Philadelphia who titled it The Scourged Back.1 Believed to have been widely circulated in the nineteenth century, the image was reproduced at least one other time in the United States and again in England. The endless array of contemporary reproductions of the image in various media, including the internet, textbooks, documentaries, artworks, and a hip hop CD cover suggests that The Scourged Back resonates profoundly in the current moment as well.2 This chapter concentrates on the nineteenth-century cultural fi elds that collaborate with The Scourged Back. Given the profuse contemporary reproduction of this image, however, this investigation also suggests genealogical links between the nineteenth-century and the contemporary moment.
