Frederick Douglass had a passion for photography and publicly lectured on the subject. He was a prominent proponent of the medium as a means by which Black people could control their likenesses beyond caricature. Some of his ideas were precursors to those of the influential German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin, whose book, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, was published 75 years later. JP Ball was one of the first African American prominent photographers, a friend of Douglass and a campaigner for anti-lynching.

In Lessons of the Hour, JP Ball’s photographic salon and studio are restaged and reimagined as expressions of the utopian values and ideas that Douglass and his contemporaries shared.

Speaking to the Guardian in 2019, Julien commented, ‘Douglass was interested in photography because of the role of autonomy it gave him over his own self-representation, as opposed to the ones that were being captured and stereotyped; Black men and women were being presented in derogatory imagery. He saw photography as a saviour of representing a regime of truth or person.’

Isaac Julien, CBE RA (born 1960) is a critically acclaimed British artist and filmmaker. In 2018, Julien joined UC Santa Cruz where he is the distinguished professor of the arts and leads the IJ Lab together with Arts Professor Mark Nash. Recent international solo exhibitions include: Isaac Julien: Western Union: Small Boats, Neuberger Museum, New York (2020); Isaac Julien: Frederick Douglass: Lessons of the Hour, ​SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2019); Looking for Langston at Tate Britain (2019); and Playtime at LACMA (2019). Julien has previously exhibited at venues including Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013), Art Institute of Chicago (2013), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2012), and Pompidou Centre Paris (2005).