MAKEDA BEST: This is a moment in which the concept of African American is really coming into being. And people are kind of exploring and thinking about what it means to be both African, a descendant of enslaved people, and American.

NARRATOR: We don’t know this woman’s name, or her life story. So how might we read this image? Here’s Makeda Best, photography historian and deputy director of curatorial affairs at the Oakland Museum in California:

BEST: She is an older woman. We know that she has lived through the Civil War.

And there is what we call hand coloring around the image. There is coloring on the book that she holds. You see on the clasps there is gold, and I’m guessing that that is a Bible. And she has hand coloring in her brooch at her neck. It shows you that she owns jewelry.

We could think about, at this time period, her interest in having an image of herself made, what it meant for her to participate in making an image of herself through this new medium of photography. I think we could imagine how that was meaningful for her.

NARRATOR: Throughout this exhibition, you’ll see other images of Black Americans, young and old.

BEST: It’s hard, I think, for people to grasp how transformative, or how revelatory, it must have been for people to be able to see themselves for the first time.

NARRATOR: Suddenly, people from all walks of life could access an inexpensive form of portraiture. And these portraits could be sent to family far away, placed in albums, or arranged on the walls at home.

BEST: You were telling a story. And so when we think about these as objects about the self, they are also, because of how they were used and shared, they are objects about a nation. They’re objects about this era and this time, and they are attempts by people to kind of write that story.