[Wagons Below Confederate Entrenchments, Belle Plain, Virginia] 1864

Curator: This somber albumen print by Timothy O’Sullivan, taken in 1864, offers a glimpse into the material reality of the American Civil War. The photograph, entitled "[Wagons Below Confederate Entrenchments, Belle Plain, Virginia]", captures a vast landscape dotted with wagons and logistical activity. Editor: It's immediately striking—the grayness pervades everything. There's a tangible weight in the atmosphere that conveys so much about the grimness of wartime. The scale feels significant; you can sense the sheer number of resources poured into this conflict. Curator: Absolutely. O'Sullivan’s photographic process itself, the laborious creation of albumen prints from glass plate negatives, mirrors the industrial scale required to sustain the war. Each wagon represents countless hours of labor extracting resources, fabricating materials, transporting supplies... The act of photography, here, becomes an artifact in its own right. Editor: And those wagons themselves become potent symbols. They're not just transporting material; they're carrying ideologies, inequalities, and violence. The photo speaks volumes about how landscapes become implicated in systemic oppression and political dominance through this very basic activity of movement of equipment. I am also interested in who is moving the material and for what cause? Curator: The image offers a relatively direct record of the material cost and human labor involved. This photographic documentation serves to bypass the need for traditional "history painting", bringing you face to face with these grim logistics. Editor: What's fascinating is the level of visibility O'Sullivan offers—or rather, perhaps, conceals. We are given access to what it looks like but are left without context. In this image, there's a flattening, a way in which photographic media renders visible this logistics as separate to ideological positionality, class and economic realities. Curator: In the end, it reveals the labor that underpins this war. I’m struck by how an early photographic method of material preservation makes one rethink the very act of photographic processes of capture and the realities of its contents. Editor: This image, with its heavy emphasis on logistics, ultimately demands we grapple with both the brutal pragmatism and larger human cost of war.