Holga Camera work at Gettysburg

Devils Den

Last March I was able to get back to Gettysburg. This time I wanted to experiment & take some photographs with a plastic Holga camera. I have not used one before & was not sure of what to expect. I shot a total of four rolls of 120mm back & white film. To my surprise the photos all turned out. Most of them showed the characteristic light fogging around the edges. Sometimes the shutter didn’t move out of the way fast enough and clipped off the corners. Over all I’m quite satisfied with the results. The photos create a mystery all there own. And it has opened up some new approaches for working with photographic images.
Although I had limited time to roam the field, the weather for once cooperated & didn’t rain. March weather can be dodgy but on this day it worked out great. Early spring is a classic time to explore battlefields because the foliage is all down & there are no bugs. I started my visit at Benner Hill to the North East of the field. It was the site of a Confederate artillery position. From hear the confederate guns were to support the bombardment of Cemetery Hill before Pickett’s Charge. Instead the guns were pounded by counter battery fire from the superior Union guns on Cemetery Hill. The Confederate guns were forced to retire.

Next Stop Rose Farm.
With William Frassanito’s book “Gettysburg: A Journey in Time” in hand, I hopped the snake fence into the famous field on Rose Farm. My goal was to line up some shots that correspond with Gardner & O’Sullivan photos of Confederate dead. It is quite a moving experience exploring this field. There is now doubt that the rocks are still there in the proper placement. The tree line has been restored to approximate1863 placement. However I don’t think I found any of the original camera angles. It will take much more time & study to set up a proper then & now study.
I am quite pleased with my photos anyway. It is clear that my photos allude to the originals but have there own quality.
I am experimenting with different scanning processes for digitizing the negatives. I first scanned the negatives with a flatbed scanner & got some interesting results. The images looked very 1863ish. The sky and trees were out of focus & blurry. It is quite interesting. Scanning the images with a film scanner gives more normal photographic results.

View South from the Rose Farm

Rose Farm looking West

View of the 20th Maine entrenchments from the base of little round top.

Northern Lights over Fredricksburg 1862

"Who would not pass on as they did, dead for their country's life, and lighted to burial by the meteors splendor of their native sky?

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

This artwork was inspired from the above quote from J. Chamberlain. In the winter of 1862, he & the 20th. Maine were involved in the Battle of Fredricksburg. Basically his unit was to charge across open ground, up to the heavily defended Marye Heights outside of the town. By the night of December 13,14 1862, he and the rest of the 20th. Maine lay repulsed, pinned down, under the Confederate guns on the Heights. That cold night as he and other survivors tried to comfort the wounded & bury the dead, the northern lights were seen to play above in the sky.

The first two images are sumi ink & conti crayon on a photo print. The period photograph is by Timothy O'Sullivan. It shows the town of Fredericksburg from the Union side of the Rappahannock River.

The rest of the images are ink on shopping bags with either oil stick or conti crayon.

Watercolors en plein air

Monocacy Battlefield looking south.
10"X14"

Last summer I was able to work on a number of watercolor sketches. The sketches are from visits to Antietam and Monocacy, Civil War battlefields in Maryland. I was fascinated with a number of aspects of working in the open air. First was trying to reconcile what I was putting down on paper as appose to what I was seeing. I believe that one must train hard to be able to observe a scene and accurately transpose it to paper. It is a very mechanical process but I found out that I was quite rusty! It becomes a matter of creating a visual shorthand where one can quickly translate the elements of sight on to a flat page. The boundaries of the page become the frame of the actual scene, but in a more fluid way than using a camera. Another observation was I found the page size dictated the scale that I painted in. In other words I tended to paint objects a certain size so as to get a given scene to fit on a page.
Another element that I need to work out is color. I found it rater difficult to work out proper color relationships between what I was seeing and what I could mix with my watercolors. Green was a particularly hard color to work with.
I hope to make some more studies this spring before there is to much vegetation, bugs, & heat.
Enjoy.

View looking North East Antietam Md.
10"X14"
I was siting on the New York monument near the visitors center. This is one of the highest points. This was the location of a Confederate artillery battery during the morning phase of the battle. In the distance you can see South Mountain. The land drops away down to the sunken lane and Roulette's Farm.
View looking North West Antietam Md
10"X14"
This is from the same New York Monument as above. I changed my angle looking north. This part of the battlefield saw the most action in the morning. In the distance you can see the cornfield where most of the action took place. Also you can see the Smoketown road cutting across to the East Woods.
Hill in front of the Sunken Lane, Antietam MD
10"X14"
This is the hill that the New York Irish brigade appeared over and slugged it out with Confederate units holding the lane.
Sunken Lane, Antietam MD
10"X14"
View looking up the lane. I did not draw in the observation tower at the far end of the lane.

Two Views of the Corn Field Antietam MD.
10"X14"
The View is from the road looking North across the battlefield.

Appomattox Panorama

"A Mighty scene, fit cadence of the story of tumultuous years. Encompassed by the cordon of steel that crowned the heights about the Court House, on the slopes of the valley formed by the sources of the Appomattox lay the remnants of the Army of North Virgina- Lees Army! It was hilly broken ground, in effect a vast amphitheater."
Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain

I have found this wonderful quote from Joshua Chamberlain who was witness to Lees surrender at Appomattox Court House, April 1865. I thought it would make an intriguing painting. Here are some sketches. I am working in charcoal, ink, and white house paint on the back of brown paper grocery bags.



This is an period image from Harpers Weekly. Lees army was camped out on the surrounding hills.

Civil War Small Works

Ridgeline, McPherson’s Farm, Gettysburg
09/20/09
Ink Jet Print, Earth, Gouache
5” X 15.5”

This image depicts the ridgeline on McPherson’s Farm looking south. Native soil taken from the area outlines the slight rise in the ground. It was along this rise that the Union forces first met the Confederate forces coming in from the West starting the battle of Gettysburg.

The photographs that I am working with are from my collection that I have taken during visits to Civil War battlefields. I photograph vistas from vantage points that best capture the monumental movements of both nature and armies. The images feature sweeping scenes of vast desolate open spaces that vanish into the distant horizon. The compositional elements are open fields, tree lines, fences and sky. Strong perspective lines draw the eye in, enhancing the feeling of vastness in the scene.
I create a panoramic image by standing in one place and panning the camera to capture the horizontal landscape. The images are stitched together using Photoshop software creating a wide horizontal field of view. I then print on watercolor paper using an ink jet printer.

After the images are mounted on a rigid surface, I work over them with various water-based media & the collected earth pigment. The over-painting process smears & smudges the underlying ink jet print. This creates an interaction between the paint and the print. When painted, the printed blacks & grays morph into soft blues & greens with unexpected halo-like effects around the edges. Colored gouache mixes with the ink, softening the hard edges of the printed image. The paint texture is translucent and allows the underlying forms and structure to show through.

View of Thomas’ Farm, Monocacy MD. Battlefield
09/09
Ink Jet Print, Earth, Gouache
5” X 13.5”

View looking West at the Thomas Farm in Monocacy, Maryland. On the fields depicted, the Union army held up a confederate advance long enough to save Washington D.C. Local native soil was used to depict the contour of the land.

In my painting I welcome elements of randomness, chance, and chaos. The media undergoes transformation on the picture surface itself. Paints are applied to the surface in a pure form and then mix and morph on the surface of the painting. For example I work a lot with iron powder which can be made to rust over time resulting in rich unexpected color details and texture. The addition of soil creates flat neutral blocks of earth tones that can obscure the underlying space or enhance the perspective.
Best Farm, Monocacy Battlefield
09/09
Ink Jet Print, Earth, Gouache
6.6” X 13”
View looking south to the Monocacy River from the Confederate line. Local earth is used to describe the landscape.

Copse of Trees, Route of Advance, Gettysburg
09/09
Ink Jet Print, Rust, Gouache, Earth
7.5” X 15.5”
View from the starting point of the Confederate attack known as Pickett’s Charge. The copse of trees visible on the horizon was the target of the charge.