Civil War photos

Went to see an exhibit down at the Library of Congress last week. It is named "The Last Full Measure - Civil War Photographs from the Liljenquist Family Collection. " It is on the second floor of the Thomas Jefferson building through August 13th. It is free, and definitely worth an hour or so if you find yourself in that part of town.

The collection encompasses both ambrotypes and tintypes of both Union and Confederate soldiers. Many of them are very young, and you really get a sense of who was in the armies. There are 360 Union images, one for every thousand who died, and 52 photos of Confederate soldiers representing one for every five thousand casualties. Even if you can't make it down there, many of the photos are available online. Go through the Library of Congress website, and they have a link. They are not all soldiers either. One portrait was of a young girl in a mourning dress, holding a picture of her father in his uniform. Another one that I found interesting was an entire African American family - the soldier, his wife and two kids. Don't know that I had ever seen a comparable image before. This family had amassed a collection of 700 or so photos through shows, shops, online and other sources over years of collecting. A pretty amazing collection.

The photos themselves were interesting enough, but the cases they came in were also part of the display. Very intricate artwork on some of these cases. The way they have them displayed makes it look like a quilt and adds something to the presentation. They did not have cameras like we do today, so for many of these families this may have been one of the only, if not the only, pictures they had of a loved one who may not have returned. Pretty moving stuff. We really weren't supposed to take pictures, but there is one here with no flash that kind of gives you a sense of what the display looked like. This is one of 6 cases. I have seen these types of photos before, but never in this quantity. You can also look up exactly how ambrotypes and tintypes were made if you're not sure what they are on the Library of Congress website in the Prints and Photographs Division.