106 Year-Old William Casby With His Great-Great-Granddaughter Photographed by Richard Avedon, 1963

In 1963, Richard Avedon’s camera captured a moment that collapses time. William Casby, born in 1857, holds his great-great-granddaughter Cherri Stamps-McCray. He’s 106. She’s an infant. The contrast is jarring.

Captured on March 24, 1963, in Algiers, Louisiana, this photograph serves as a “living bridge” between eras of American history.

Born into slavery in 1857 in Algiers, Louisiana (or possibly Danville, Virginia, according to some records), Casby was among the last living Americans with direct memories of enslavement. He later worked as a longshoreman in Louisiana and lived to the age of 113, passing away in 1970.

Avedon traveled to the South after reading a newspaper article about Casby’s 106th birthday. The photo was taken on March 24, 1963, just months before the March on Washington. It was part of Avedon’s collaboration with writer James Baldwin for the book Nothing Personal (1964), which explored the state of American identity.

William Casby, one of the last living Americans born into slavery, surrounded by several generations of his family, Algiers, Louisiana, March 24, 1963. “It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere,” Baldwin writes in Nothing Personal. “To know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.”

Avedon utilized his signature minimalist approach to give the portrait a “forensic” intensity. By stripping away environmental context, Avedon forces the viewer to confront Casby’s physical presence, the “avalanche of age” reflected in his deep wrinkles and steady gaze.

This large-format camera captured immense detail, emphasizing the texture of Casby’s skin and the sheer size of his hands, which many viewers note look like those of a man who worked hard his entire life (he was a longshoreman for decades).

William Casby, Algiers, Louisiana, March 24, 1963.

The photograph is often cited by historians and critics (including Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida) for its ability to collapse time. When it was published, it served as a reminder that slavery was not “ancient history;” the man in the photo had personally experienced it, yet was alive to hold a child who would grow up in the space-age 20th century.