Baptismal Font, St. James’s Church, Piccadilly, London, UK, 2017
Artist
William Earle Williams
(American, born 1950)
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsSheet: 10 x 8 in (25.4 x 20.3 cm)
Credit LinePicker Art Gallery. Purchase of the Gary M. Hoffer '74 Memorial Photography Collection Fund
Object number2022.3.1
DescriptionIn England during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, manumitted Africans recognized that the same legal system that offered protection against slavery once sanctioned it. Many believed they could only be protected if they were baptized and made equal both under law and in the eyes of God. In the Americas missionaries sought to Christianize slaves while owners fought to ensure that this did not change their status as chattel. Williams’s photograph is a comment on this and commemorates formerly enslaved abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano (ca. 1757–after 1791), who was baptised at the abolitionist church, St. James’s Church, Piccadilly. After this, he became an outspoken abolitionist and his autobiographical book, "Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species" (1787), called for an immediate end to slavery.
ClassificationsPhotographs
Collections
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