OPENING EXHIBITION RECEPTION TO FOLLOW AT 7 PM
THE WOUNDED CIVIL WAR SOLDIER:
PHOTOGRAPHS BY R.B. BONTECOU FROM THE BURNS COLLECTION
**Please RSVP Space is limited, particularly for the 6 pm reading
RSVP TO education@merchantshouse.org or 212-777-1089
The Merchant’s House Museum
29 East Fourth Street (Between Lafayette and Bowery), New York, NY 10003
Dr. Burns will show, for the first time, exclusive images from the private photo albums of Reed Brockway Bontecou, MD. A significant new chapter in Civil War history is revealed with this first Exposé of the wartime clinical photographs of Dr. Bontecou. Michael Rhode, Chief Archivist, Otis Historical Archives has noted “Dr. Burns has done the medical and photographic history communities a great service by rescuing and making these images available....”
The Burns Collection houses Dr. Bontecou’s four original Civil War albums as well as medical equipment and ephemera relating to his personal life. Bontecou’s carte de visite album is the premier medical photograph album of the Civil War. No other large compilation of wartime clinical images exists, with over 570 images. Almost all the photos were taken during the war or immediately after in the spring of 1865. The public and the historical community have never before seen most of these images.
Advanced copies of Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography By R.B. Bontecou will be available at the lecture for $50.
This lecture is in conjunction with the The Merchant’s House Museum exhibition
New York’s Civil War Soldiers – Photographs of Dr. R. B. Bontecou, Words of Walt Whitman
Exhibition runs through Monday, August 1, 2011
