Over the course of his life, Frederick Douglass routinely made use of photography, as art object, political instrument, and metaphor with a particular investment in the relationship between image making, freedom, and progress. The frequency with which he sat for photographic portraits has earned him the status as the most photographed man in the nineteenth century. Douglass’s images circulated widely as collectable cartes-de-visites and in personal and political albums. The photographs’ networks of circulation are crucial to understanding Douglass’s photographic practice.