Logan Monument, Lake Front Park 1887 - 1893

This stereograph of the Logan Monument in Chicago's Lake Front Park was produced by Henry Hamilton Bennett. Bennett’s stereographs were often produced as a kind of “infotainment” for a growing middle class. Looking at this image today, we might ask about how historical monuments shape collective memory and national identity. Monuments dedicated to figures like General Logan, a Civil War hero and later a U.S. Senator, often sanitize complex histories, glossing over uncomfortable truths about race, power, and the human cost of conflict. Bennett’s work invites us to think about how photography itself plays a role in constructing historical narratives, and consider the stories that remain untold or unseen. What does it mean to monumentalize one individual's achievements? How do these acts of memorialization shape our understanding of the past and, in turn, our present?