Chattanooga Valley from Lookout Mountain, No. 2 1864 - 1866

George N. Barnard captured this albumen print, “Chattanooga Valley from Lookout Mountain, No. 2,” sometime during the American Civil War. Barnard was one of a number of photographers who found a market in documenting the war. It became his public role to provide visual records and, more importantly, to offer an emotional connection to events and places far from home. This image is a landscape, but it's impossible to divorce the scene from its military significance. Lookout Mountain was the site of a crucial Union victory in 1863. The photograph’s meaning lies in that tension between a seemingly neutral landscape and its political charge. A historian interpreting this photograph might consult military archives, period newspapers, and census records to understand the social conditions of wartime America. The image speaks to the power of photography to shape public memory and the politics of imagery, and to the institutions of the military, the press, and even the art world.