Slave Photographs in Lincoln

n interviews, Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner said that he experi- enced a breakthrough during the writing process when he realized that the story of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment is largely a story about white men who had no personal experience of slavery. 1 In light of this realization, and the filmmakers' related choice not to include slaves them- selves as a part of the story, the film's use of slave photographs is worth exploring. By depicting young Tad Lincoln and President Lincoln consum- ing photographs of slaves, the filmmakers use photography to put charac- ters in visual relation to slavery and invite reflection on photography's capacity to fuel the desire to look. Furthermore, the slave photographs erupt into the story at moments when the filmmakers want to emphasize how timely political calculation needs to be balanced with moral imperative. Slave photographs appear or are discussed three times in the film, each time involving Lincoln's interactions with his youngest son, Tad. The film explains that the glass plates were loaned to the Lincolns by Alexander Gardner, a well-known photographer in Washington, D.C. whose real-life gallery Lincoln frequented while president. 2 While the authenticity of this specific story is doubtful—historian of Lincoln iconography Harold Holzer points out that Gardner would never "have sent one-of-a-kind, fragile plates to the rambunctious little 'sprite' of the White House"—the circulation of slave images in the form of cartes de visite, or paper photographs printed on card stock, was common during a period when photographs of all kinds