Something that is never addressed with these "whipping photograph" (and as I remember I only know of seeing the same photograph in every book) is WHY this particular person was whiped in the first place. The circumstance under which he was whipped is left to one imagination.

The same happens in the whipping scene in the movie "Glory". While the subject is whipped for desertion (maybe justly or unjustly) while in the army, there is no explaination as to why he had the previous whip marks on his back in the first place.

The observer of the Photograph, or movie, is left to his, or her, own imagination unusally that the person was whipped for no real reason at all. Usually leading to the assumption of the burtality of the Slave/Master system.

The point is that whipping was a common form of punishment for many infraction of criminality in antibellum culture for any crime up to and including murder. As in the movie "Glory" it was used as a means of Punishment in the United States Military on Land and at Sea with Flogging. The same was true in the plantation for criminality rather than submit the offender to the local law enforcement authorities.

So we are shown these picture to stir feelings of rightfull revultion and indignation at these images, without the benefit of the full details as to what the circumstances behind these punishments were for. Had that person in the photograph with the whip marks actually killed another slave in a fit of rage? We don't know. That would have been a crime that the local authorities would not have handled. And if they had handled such a case they would have probably hung the offender. The slave owner would not have wished to lose another valuable worker.

The Photographer (for whatever reason) has placed us in the position where we are therefore left to our imaginations to assume the worst possible senerio because that is what we have been conditioned to think. To involk a desired responce. "Pavlov's Dogs"