Through a rich interpretation of the remarkable photographs W. E. B. Du Bois compiled for the American Negro
Exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition, Shawn Michelle Smith reveals the visual dimension of the color line that
Du Bois famously called "the problem of the twentieth century." Du Bois's prize-winning exhibit consisted
of three albums together containing 363 black-and-white photographs, mostly of middle-class African Americans from
Atlanta and other parts of Georgia. Smith provides an extensive analysis of the images, the antiracist message
Du Bois conveyed by collecting and displaying them, and their connection to his critical thought. She contends
that Du Bois was an early visual theorist of race and racism and demonstrates how such an understanding makes the
important concepts he developed -- including double consciousness, the color line, the Veil, and second sight --
available to scholars of visual culture and African American studies in powerful new ways.
Smith reads Du Bois's photographs in relation to other turn-of-the-century images such as scientific typologies,
criminal mugshots, racist caricatures, and lynching photographs. By juxtaposing these images with reproductions
from Du Bois's exhibition archive, Smith shows how Du Bois deliberately challenged racist representations of African
Americans. Emphasizing the importance of comparing multiple visual archives, Photography on the Color Line reinvigorates
understandings of the stakes of representation and the fundamental connections between race and visual culture
in the United States.