A US woman who argued in court that Harvard University had illegally profited from images of her slave ancestors has had her case dismissed.

The judge in a Connecticut court ruled that claimant Tamara Lanier had no legal claim to the images because photographs belong to the photographer. 

The retired probation officer, who claims to be the great-great-great-granddaughter of Renty, asked in her lawsuit for Harvard to return the images to her family, pay unspecified damages, and acknowledge that it was "complicit in perpetuating and justifying the institution of slavery".

Neither Harvard nor the judge disputed Ms Lanier’s evidence that she was a direct descendant of Renty.

Tenet

But, Justice Sarrouf commented: “It is a basic tenet of common law that the subject of a photograph has no interest in the negative or any photographs printed from the negative.”

He also rejected Ms Lanier’s claim that Harvard had exploited the photographs for financial gain, for example, by putting Renty’s image on the cover of a book. The right to control the commercial use of the photographs had expired with the deaths of the subjects, the judge said.

The images, which were daguerreotypes, an early type of photograph, were taken in a studio in South Carolina. They show a man known as Renty and his daughter Delia, both stripped naked to the waist.

Systematic subversion

The pictures, commissioned in 1850, were used in attempts to prove the discredited theory that black people were inferior.

In her claim, Lanier said that the exhibition is "perpetuating the systematic subversion of black property rights".

Ms Lanier said she would appeal against the decision. The judge "completely missed the humanistic aspect of this", she said.