The Schomburg Center’s Photographs and Prints Division houses more than 500,000 photographs, lithographs, and engravings by and about Black people in the U.S., Africa, and the wider African Diaspora. Recently, 17 daguerreotype portraits in the Division dating from the 1840s to 1850s, most of them featuring Black subjects, were digitized and are now available to view online. They represent the oldest photos in the Schomburg Center’s Photographs and Prints Division.
Source: Explore the Oldest Digitized Photos from the Schomburg Center | The New York Public Library