Civil War Reenvisioned

This Civil War photograph was ...wait, are those porta-potties in the background? And a station wagon? Yes, this photograph is less than a year old, but you can imagine someone cropping it and using it as a Civil War photo sometime in the future. Photographer Richard Barnes shoots Civil War reenactments using techniques authentic to the period, such as wet-plate photography. The picture shown here was taken at the 150th anniversary reenactment of the First Battle of Bull Run. See a gallery of Barnes' reenactment photographs at National Geographic magazine. Link

(Image credit: Richard Barnes)

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There's a bar in Nashville with some Civil War photos on the wall. I noticed one of them looked "off" from the others somehow. It was a photo of two Confederate soldiers posing next to a canon with a view of the surrounding hills receding into the distance. The patina and fade were there, but for some reason it didn't feel right. Upon closer inspection I noticed that the canon was sitting in a cleared area with a tasteful stone wall and a commemoration plaque next to it! There was also something about the faces of the men, they just looked too "modern" to me in a way that I can't quite describe; obviously re-enactors trying their best. I wonder how many people glance at that picture and just lump it in with the genuine photos surrounding it.