The next meeting of the Nashville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Monday, December 19th, 2011, in the visitor’s center of Ft. Negley Park, a unit of Metro Parks, Nashville, TN. This is located off I-65 just south of downtown between 4th Avenue South and 8th Avenue South on Edgehill Avenue/Chestnut Avenue. Take Exit 81, Wedgewood Avenue, off I-65 and follow the signs to the Science Museum and Greer Stadium. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and is always open to the public. There is no charge to attend.
OUR SPEAKER AND TOPIC: “Civil War Photography”
While photography existed before the Civil War, that war gave it a powerful boost in not only popularity, but also as a method of documenting war for the first time. A coterie of photographers, many of whom were protégés of Matthew Brady, followed the armies as they marched taking pictures of officers and men during the down times and battlefields after the shooting had stopped. Both styles of images were powerful and brought home to the public at large for the first time just what war was.
Photographs of the period came in several types including cartes de visite; tin types, daguerreotypes, stereo types and glass images. All of them had their strengths and weaknesses and each was processed in a different manner. Cartes de visite were the “baseball cards” of their day, often cheaper and easier to get into the hands of the people while the other styles often came in ornate frames. Smaller versions of images often went off to war with soldiers, they often featuring the wife and any children. Each type of image was different and had their own unique manners of development.
John Walsh, owner of Fort Donelson Relics, and an avid collector of Civil War images, will be speaking about Civil War photography. His program will cover all of the types of images and how each differed from the other. The program will also have a short history of photography prior to the Civil War as well as show how it greatly expanded during the war with more and more photographers taking to the fields from the various Northern and Southern cities. Lastly, he’ll also review some of the tips and attributes to look for in an image when looking at or purchasing such images for your collection.
If you own Civil War images, you might want to bring them to this meeting where our speaker can help you with their care and perhaps answer some lingering questions for you. John lives in Dover, Tennessee with his wife Nikki and two sons. They own Fort Donelson Relics just down the road from the national park. John also works for a clinical products firm.
The Nashville Civil War Roundtable is made possible by Nashville Metro Parks and the Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Military History.
Greg Biggs