Relics of war the history of a photograph
In the decade after the American Civil War, many of the same photographers who had documented battlefields during the conflict joined survey expeditions to the American West. While they once took pictures of burnt cities or bullet-wounds in the eastern combat zones, these artists now captured images...
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| Formato: | Libro |
| Idioma: | Inglés |
| Publicado: |
Princeton ; Oxford :
Princeton University Press
[2024]
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| Ver en Universidad de Navarra: | https://unika.unav.edu/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991011569305708016&context=L&vid=34UNAV_INST:VU1&search_scope=34UNAV_TODO&tab=34UNAV_TODO&lang=es |
| Sumario: | In the decade after the American Civil War, many of the same photographers who had documented battlefields during the conflict joined survey expeditions to the American West. While they once took pictures of burnt cities or bullet-wounds in the eastern combat zones, these artists now captured images of landscapes and geological formations to map, measure, and picture the unfamiliar western terrain. Scholars have not yet examined how the work the photographers produced during the Civil War influenced their new assignments, or post-war photography. This book reexamines these critical years in the history of photography and offers a complex narrative that probes the visual, material, and ideological relationships between wartime and post-war photography. Focusing on four photographers of the period-Mathew Brady (1822-1896), Timothy O'Sullivan (c. 1840-1882), William H. Bell (1830-1910), and William A. Bell (1841-1921)-author Jennifer Raab examines how the work of photographing warfare-specifically violence to the body-shaped and impacted post-Civil War photography. She explores a range of issues throughout the book including the status of the relic in nineteenth-century culture and how the photograph itself might function as a relic; the material problem of dead bodies, burial, and commemoration; the connections between medical photography and landscape representation; and the relationship between photography and pilgrimage -- Editor How a single haunting image tells a story about violence, mourning, and memoryIn 1865, Clara Barton traveled to the site of the notorious Confederate prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, where she endeavored to name the missing and the dead. The future founder of the American Red Cross also collected their relics-whittled spoons, woven reed plates, a piece from the prison's "dead line," a tattered Bible-and brought them back to her Missing Soldiers Office in Washington, DC, presenting them to politicians, journalists, and veterans' families before having them photographed together in an altar-like arrangement. Relics of War reveals how this powerful image, produced by Mathew Brady, opens a window onto the volatile relationship between suffering, martyrdom, and justice in the wake of the Civil War.Jennifer Raab shows how this photograph was a crucial part of Barton's efforts to address the staggering losses of a war in which nearly half of the dead were unnamed and from which bodies were rarely returned home for burial. The Andersonville relics gave form to these absent bodies, offered a sacred site for grief and devotion, mounted an appeal on behalf of the women and children left behind, and testified to the crimes of war. The story of the photograph illuminates how military sacrifice was racialized as political reconciliation began, and how the stories of Black soldiers and communities were silenced.Richly illustrated, Relics of War vividly demonstrates how one photograph can capture a precarious moment in history, serving as witness, advocate, evidence, and memory -- Editor |
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| Descripción Física: | 218 páginas : ilustraciones (blanco y negro y color) ; 25 cm |
| Bibliografía: | Incluye referencias bibliográficas (páginas 205-210) e índice |
| ISBN: | 9780691179971 |
