African-American portraits at Atlanta History Center
"I sell the shadow to support the substance," goes the inscription underneath abolitionist and women's rights leader Sojourner Truth's 1870 portrait. The former slave traveled the country, lecturing about the inhumanity of slavery and about African-American and women's rights. To support this work, she sold copies of her autobiography and photos of herself. "She understood photography," Willis says, "the importance of it." The National Portrait Gallery
