A brilliant orator, writer and social justice agitator, Frederick Douglass meticulously cultivated his image through photography. His portrait was taken over 160 times, in sittings across the country, making Douglass the most photographed American of the 19th century. 

Photographer: Albert Sands Southworth & Josiah Johnson Hawes, c. 1845 

Courtesy of Onondaga Historical Association

Photographer: Edwin Burke Ives & Reuben L. Andrews, January 21, 1863

Photographer: Benjamin F. Smith, January-February 1864

Courtesy of the Armistad Center for Art & Culture, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

Photographer: Alfred B. Crosby & Israel Warren Merrill, April 1864

Photographer: Henry P. Rundel & Charles Warren Woodward, c. 1865

Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Photographer: James Presley Ball, January 12, 1867

Courtesy of the Cincinnati History Library and Archives

Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Photographer: Denis Bourdon, May 10, 1894

Courtesy of Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College

Standards for The Most Photographed Man of the 19th Century