Throughout February Monmouth Arts is highlighting Black artists from New Jersey for Black History Month.
Our fourth feature is Augustus Washington, a photographer and daguerreotypist (the first commercially successful photographic process (1839-1860) in the history of photography) who was born in Trenton in 1820. Son of former slaves, Washington was one of the most successful African-American photographers in the mid-1800s.
When Washington attended Dartmouth in 1843 and started having trouble with the college’s expenses, he turned to photography to try and make ends meet.
The photographer left Dartmouth and opened up a successful photography studio in Hartford, Connecticut. After thriving in Connecticut, Washington moved with his wife and children amid a tense racial climate in America to Liberia and opened up a daguerreotype studio there.
Washington served in Liberia’s House of Representatives and Senate, and was one of the nation’s vital sugarcane farmers. Washington was an influential figure in both the United States and Liberia before his death in 1875.
Image 1: Advertisement from The Hartford Daily Courant, 1852, Connecticut Historical Society
Image 2: Chancy Brown, three-quarter length portrait, Library of Congress
Image 3: Woman, three-quarter length portrait, Library of Congress
Original source can be found here.
