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Battlefield Series - portraits
Spotsylvania 1 (Pvt. Wilkins)
The portraits utilized in this series of images are of common soldiers who fought in the U.S. Civil War. The source of these portraits is the U.S. Surgeon General's Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens - a multivolume set that records over 400 injuries during the war years.
Chancellorsville 5 (Cpt. E. Severn)
Gettysburg (Unknown)
The archive contains graphic photographs and written descriptions of successful and unsuccessful experimental surgical treatments rendered upon casualties of war. One of the few positive outcomes, the magnitude and brutality of the fighting created an incredible learning environment for medical professionals. Certainly primitive by today's standards, the archive did successfully consolidate knowledge, which helped to drastically improve medical care moving forward.
Spotsylvania 9 (unknown)
Importantly, this archive also included biographical information on each of the wounded men - their names and how and where their injuries were received.
Gettysburg 3 (Pvt. Thomas Green)
With the aid of a digital projector, I was able to use the information contained within the archive to relocate these soldiers back into the fields where they fought and fell 150 years ago. These projections are cast upon the sites where those depicted fought and fell. Rather than post-production collage via Photoshop layering or the like, I was interested in the physical integration, image wrapping over structure, and how projected fragments from the past are supported by and illuminating of the landscapes and structures they are cast upon.
Gettysburg (unidentified member of the Timbers family)
Of the 400 case studies within the U.S. Surgeon General's archive, no Black soldiers or Black civilians were included. (This image came from the Gettysburg Historical Society.) This lack of Black presence in archival materials during the war years is pervasive and in part responsible for our general lack of awareness of the varied and important roles Black individuals performed during the U.S. Civil War. How does one make work about what isn't there, what has been rendered invisible? This question inspired the Battlefield: USCT series.
Slaughter Pen 2 (Troiani's Irish)
Landscapes, Shrines, and Archives
Devil's Den 2
Devil's Den refers to a collection of rocks on the Gettysburg battlefield site. During the second day of fighting six Confederate sharpshooters took position here and effectively terrorized a fortified Union line on the hills above, eventually killing a Union officer. Concussive blasts from subsequent volumes of canon fire eventually killed the sharpshooters. Photographer Andrew Gardner, recorded the aftermath a few days later, in what has since become one of the most iconic images of the U.S. Civil War.
Devil's Den 1
What has since been discovered is that Gardner's image is a fake. Gardner had a more photogenic corpse brought in, moved rocks, posed the body, tossed in his own rifle, and framed the scene for maximum affect. Rather than the exception, much of how we have come to look at the war is similarly crafted. Certain events and sites are approached with great reverence and notoriety. Other locations, sites of tremendous violence and loss, have almost entirely slipped from public consciousness.
Chatham Cemetery
Chatham manor is the only private residence to have been visited by Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Eisenhower. During the disastrous Siege of Fredericksburg (12,000 Union casualties), it was used as a hospital for Union wounded. According to a period map I found at the Historic Society, this unmarked field bordering what is now the Manor's parking lot served as a mass grave. As a guest of the Park Service I inquired if the bodies were still there. No one knew.
Rappahannock River
The Siege of Fredericksburg began at the banks of the Rappahannock, roughly where this photo was taken. A Union force of 120,000 attempted to cross into the town of Frederickburg. Pontoons were laid across the river, and for 4 days soldiers were subjected to constant bombardment from Confederate forces firing down from the high hills west of town. Due to the superior position, Union loses were triple that of Confederate. The Union general directing these efforts was relieved of command due to gross incompetence.
Frozen Ground, Fredericksburg
Death Bed 1 (Stonewall Jackson)
This image was taken at the Stonewall Jackson Shrine, in honor of one of the Confederacy's most revered generals. The shrine preserves the house where he died. According to an onsite pamphlet, Jackson did not touch alcohol, had a Black servant that refused to leave his bedside, and his last words were, "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees." Southern revisionism is perhaps at its peak when the focus shifts to the benevolence and gallantry of their fallen generals.
Death Bed 2 (Stonewall Jackson)
How does one rebrand a conflict where yours was the side that started a war to keep Black women, men, and children as property? With the physical war lost, how do you win the ideological one? Reframe the narrative - claim it was about state's rights, that it was your freedom under threat. You make martyrs out of your fallen - all venerable men of God, Confederate saints, shrines stuffed with relics.
Confederate Boot
Lincoln
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