(21) -5678. Cotton is King–Plantation Scene, Georgia

Like <em>Morning Start in a Cotton Field</em> (2018-58), this is a stereoscopic view, a format that places two images taken at slightly different angles side by side on a single card. When viewed through a binocular device called a stereoscope, the two images coalesce into one, producing an illusion of three-dimensionality. This stereograph depicts a harvesting scene. Rows of Black men, women, and children are shown at work in the field, filling baskets with ripe cotton, while in the distance a white armed guard on horseback patrols the laborers. Widely distributed, such a photograph bears witness to the postbellum plantation economy. However, it does not capture the backbreaking and painful labor required to pick cotton, and it may reflect a desire of white consumers to see the experience of Black laborers through a picturesque lens. As the inscription on the verso of the stereocard details: “This beautiful field ‘white unto the harvest’. . . is a scene to delight a painter, and at the same time is a condensed encyclopedia of one of the greatest industries of the whole world.” The text then describes the quality and the quantity of the cotton produced in the United States. The laborers who are the subject of this picture are barely acknowledged but are equated with harvest machinery: “The picking is usually done by negro laborers, as here, though experiments with harvesting machines are meeting with some success.”