Bearing Witness to War: Photography and Conflict in the High Museum of Art’s Collections
Post by Nina Pelaez
George N. Barnard, Scene of General McPherson’s Death, 1864-1866, Albumen silver print
[This post contains graphic images]
Currently on view here at the High Museum are three photographs by George N. Barnard. Barnard was one of over 1500 photographers who documented the Civil War at a time when the medium was a mere twenty years old. The work of photographers like Barnard, Matthew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and Timothy H. O’Sullivan serves as some of the earliest examples of socially- engaged documentary. These photographers’ graphic images of dead soldiers and ruined battlefields captured the devastation of war and revealed the harrowing impact of this conflict to the American public. Circulated— to a limited extent— in publications, exhibitions, and collected in rare albums, these images revealed the incredible potential of photography to record social events. Previously, artists documenting conflict often depicted war as a patriotic, symbolic, and even theatrical event. Paintings often depicted generals and soldiers as heroic and dignified. Photography, on the other hand, provided a graphic and unrefined account of war, uncovering the harsh reality of devastation and death.
Alexander Gardner, A Burial Party on Battlefield of Cold Harbor, Virginia, 1865
Matthew Brady was one of the first photographers to begin documenting the war. Brady left his profitable portrait business in New York and, without any financial backing, embarked on an extensive documentary project. Brady invested over $100,000 of his own money to outfit his team of twenty photographers— which included O’Sullivan, Gardner, and Barnard— many of whom were former employees of his portrait business. Brady was the first photographer to capture images of dead soldiers in America. Just two days after the battle of Antietam, where over 23,000 were killed, Brady and his team documented the aftermath. The harrowing collection of twenty-one photographs was displayed in a New York gallery just a few weeks later. One critic from the New York Times commented that it was as if the photographer had “brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets.”
Timothy H. O’Sullivan, Antietam Dead, 1862
These early examples of war photography set a precedent for the coming generations. In recent years, photographers like Kael Alford have embarked on dangerous and intrepid documentary projects in international zones of conflict. Alford, an independent journalist, traveled to Iraq to photograph the aftermath of the U.S. military invasion in 2003. Working outside of the confines of the U.S. military’s official embedded journalist program, Alford’s photographs provide a nuanced account of the conflict. Whereas much of the media coverage of the war focused on the impact of the war on American soldiers, Alford’s images captured the daily reality of Iraqi citizens living and dying amid immense social and political upheaval. Writing about her work, Alford has said:
“I consider these photographs invitations to the viewer to learn more, to explore the relationships between public policy objectives and their real-world execution and to consider the legacies of human grief, anger, mistrust and dismay that surely follow violent conflict. I hope that these images will also provide a window on the grace of Iraq and perhaps help to give a few of these memories a place to rest.”
Kael Alford, Shoala, 2003, Archival digital print
Alford’s testimony shares something with her photographic predecessors: a desire to reveal the continuous impact and devastation of war on people and places. As another contemporary photographer in the High Museum’s collection, Sally Mann’s, work suggests, the historical memory of war and destruction continue to endure in the present. Her haunting photographs of Civil War battlefields evoke some of the loss, pain, and even violence embedded in these historical sites. While the passage of time has served to visibly erase much of this traumatic evidence, Mann’s evocative and somber images conjure the invisible scars and enduring darkness of history. In Untitled (Antietam #1)(2000), Mann returned to the same battlefield photographed by Brady, Gardner, and O'Sullivan over a century before when they captured “live” images of the Civil War. Using the same collodion wet-plate method employed by Brady and his colleagues to produce photographic negatives, Mann’s quiet, solemn images look to the past as a means for reflecting on the continued legacies of violence, war, and conflict that endure in our present.
In “Ode to Edmund,” Georgia-born artist Wini McQueen (American, born 1943) creates a red, white, and blue quilt as homage to Edmund G. Carlisle, an enslaved man of African ancestry living in South Carolina who taught himself to read and write. In the antebellum South, plantation owners, afraid that written communication between enslaved peoples might lead to rebellion or escape, strictly limited their access to education. Punishment for learning to read was severe for both slaves and anyone trying to teach them. Like many others, Edmund Carlisle was brutally disciplined for his efforts.
Wini McQueen, Ode to Edmund, 1993, photo transfer on cotton
The text of McQueen’s quilt is drawn from recollections by former slaves and their children, which were documented in the 1930’s as part of the Federal Writers’ Project, a branch of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Alongside these testimonies, McQueen incorporates photographic transfers of her own enslaved ancestors. The photographs come from a series of fifteen daguerreotypes of five individuals made on a South Carolina plantation in 1850 by a local photographer named Joseph Zealy. The photographs were commissioned by a Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz, who was seeking visual “evidence” to prove his theory that Africans and Europeans were of different species. When Agassiz was unable to prove this theory, the photographs were stored away and forgotten until 1975.
McQueen appropriates these forgotten photographs in her work and brings the identities, words, and subjectivities of these individuals to the fore. Together, the patches of image and text form a geometric pattern inspired by traditional African textiles from West Africa. McQueen calls her work “urban kente,” referring to the kente weaving tradition which originated in the former Gold Coast (now Ghana). During the triangular trade, textiles played a crucial role, as they served as one of the main forms of currency that Europeans and Americans used in the purchase of enslaved people.
Asante Artist, Ghana, Kente cloth, ca. 1900-1925, silk
Kente cloths, made of pieced-together strips of fabric, are often worn as festive dress for special occasions. Although kente textiles most familiarly feature black, gold, green, and red patterns (such as the above example from the High Museum’s Collection of African Art), earlier weaving traditions originating in Mali often featured cotton cloth woven in designs of indigo and white. These earlier examples, which date as far back as the 11th and 12th centuries, eventually developed into kente during the rise of the Asante (or Ashanti) Kingdom in the 18th century. In the kente weaving tradition, the colors used in the textiles are sometimes regarded as symbolic. For example, the gold may denote prosperity, red symbolizes the political and evokes anger, and white evokes the spirits of ancestors.
In McQueen’s quilts, the use of red, white, and blue also allude to the colors of the American flag, tying together African and American traditions and identities. However, her work offers a critique of that identity, suggesting the many forgotten faces and experiences that comprise the patchwork of American history and culture.
Delicate Materials, Powerful Meanings in the Art of Fred Wilson and Kara Walker
Post by Nina Pelaez
Kara Walker (American, born 1969), The Means to an End... A Shadow Drama in Five Acts, 1995, Etching and aquatint
Recently installed in the High Museum’s Stent Skyway, Kara Walker’s cut-paper silhouettes, The Means to an End… A Shadow Drama in Five Acts (1995), grapple with the legacy of violence, slavery, and racial oppression endured by African-Americans, especially those living in the Southern United States. During the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the paper silhouette was a popular practice, often taken up by amateur artists, most often women, to quickly and easily capture the likeness of a friend or loved-one. Writing about her early work, Walker has said “I would end up pulling out forms that were second-rate, or at least undervalued in the trajectory of contemporary painting.” In her theatrical silhouettes, Walker appropriates this minor, dainty form, which was especially popular during the Victorian era, to shed light on the disturbing and violent realities of African-Americans living during the same period. Walker transforms the humble, delicate material of cut paper into elaborate and powerful scenes that deal with the disturbing history of race relations. The images, on their surface, exude a romanticism and pseudo-playfulness; they offer a false-whimsy that, very quickly, is grossly (and grotesquely) undermined.
Fred Wilson (American, born 1954), Chandelier Mori: Speak of Me as I Am, 2003, Murano glass and light bulbs
Fred Wilson’s Chandelier Mori: Speak of Me as I Am (2003), also on view in the High Museum’s Stent Skyway, similarly appropriates a material and method with a long and laden history. The content and message of Wilson’s work subverts the Venetian chandelier’s frivolous and ostentatious decoration. Wilson commissioned a glass fabricator to produce the luxurious chandelier in the traditional Venetian style. Instead of using the conventional white and pastel colored Murano glass, however, Wilson asked that the glass be produced in black. Color takes an especially loaded meaning here, as the untraditional black glass of the chandelier stands in for the predominantly overlooked history of Africans living in Venice during the 18th century. Wilson has said: “Whenever I use black it relates to some history of Africans in that particular place. It’s the idea of the color black as a metaphor, or as a representation of African-Americans. It’s the notion of black – blackness— and all its other meanings in relation to the history of race but also its meanings as just the color— or lack of color— or specific materials and their own histories, and trying to confuse that a bit." In Chandelier Mori, Wilson’s use of black glass gives visibility to the historical presence of Africans in Venice, while at the same time, it metaphorically signals the apparent “lack” that exists in the historical record.
In both of Walker and Wilson’s work, the beauty, delicacy, and even ostentation of the works’ materials appear to conflict with the powerful social and political messages of the art. Such discord, however, actually works to confuse and complicate viewers’ expectations of the work. For Wilson and Walker, artful aesthetics are wielded as powerful vehicles for examining the devastating historical oppression, exclusion, and effacement of a people. In their work, the historical is used to comment on the present-day legacy and effects of racism. In a video produced for Art21, Walker states that “the illusion [of my work] is that it is about past events… that it is simply about a particular point in history and nothing else. And it’s really part of the ruse that I tend to like to approach the complexities of my own life; by distancing myself and finding a parallel in something prettier and more genteel, like that picture of the old south that’s an old stereotype.” Both Walker and Wilson’s work—particularly though their unexpected adoption of nostalgic, fragile forms—opens up a present-day dialogue about these historical omissions, pushing the viewer to question extant historical narratives and consider how past discrimination resonates in the contemporary moment.
Tell us what you think: how do the materials artists use contribute to the meaning of work?
The Interpretation Department at the High Museum of Art is proud to announce the launch of our blog, High Art Connect. Over the past few months, we have been inspired by conversations staff have been having about "the social value of museums," the theme of this year's annual meeting of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). In late April, professionals from museums all across America will be convening here in Atlanta, Georgia to talk and think about how cultural institutions like ours can (and do) inspire social change. We couldn't be more thrilled to be taking part in this dialogue!
The hope is that this blog will help us collectively engage in this critical discussion, while also allowing our visitors to connect and engage with our collections and exhibitions in new and exciting ways. We invite you to join us in exploring the many ways that art can affect and influence society and in answering such questions as: What does it mean for art, and art museums, to be socially engaged? What are the many forms socially engaged art and museum practice can take? What can we, as a cultural institution, do to become more socially engaged? While we don't expect to find perfect, or complete, solutions to these questions, we look forward to the rich dialogues incited around these fascinating and challenging inquiries.
In the coming weeks, we will be posting content relating to themes of engagement, activism, civil rights, community, and social change. Follow us as we delve into our collections, exhibitions, and programs and experiment with new interpretive and engagement strategies. We invite you to explore our collections through these themes and also to engage with us by participating in dialogues around these works and sharing your own experiences and opinions about these topics. We can't wait to hear what you think!
