Review for Shooting Soldiers in Blue & Gray Magazine

Reviewed by John Michael Priest in Vol XXVIII #5

As a historian, I have had a fascination with medicine throughout the ages, my favorite source being the ten volume Surgical and Medical History of the Civil War. I have visited the superb Civil War Medical Museum in Frederick, MD and have edited the wartime letters and diary of Hospital Steward John N. Henry, 49th New York. Burns’ wonderful book will also have a prominent place among my favorite books about the Civil War.
   

Doctor Burns begins the work with a detailed biography of Reed B. Bontecou, a person about whom I knew nothing, despite having seen samples from his collection in the surgical history of the war. Besides having the larges known collection of Civil War medical photographs, Bontecou later developed the first antiseptic wound packet for use by individual soldiers, and in 1897 he unsuccessfully attempted to repair a typhoidal intestinal perforation–the first such operation ever performed in the United States.
 

This book, the first in a series, contains 101 graphic images of identified Federal and Confederate casualties from the collection of Surgeon Bontecou, who had them taken at Harewood Hospital in Washington, DC. Each photograph includes Bontecou’s notations about the injuries. He meticulously recorded each man’s name, company, and regiment to preserve them for posterity. I could not get over how young many of these hapless individuals looked. The pictures drove home how terrible wounds actually looked.
 

Shooting Soldiers is a masterpiece. It should be in the library of every serious Civil War student or novelist because it will dispel any prior conceptions about the effects of muzzle-loading projectiles on a human being. For me, seeing the faces of the men portrayed in this book and knowing who they were has made the war all the more personal.     

A new edition of Mike Priest’s Before Antietam: The Battle for South Mountain with foreword by Ed Bearss was published in 2011.
 

TO PURCHASE SHOOTING SOLDIERS VISIT THE BURNS PRESS BOOK STORE BY CLICKING HERE

NYC Photo Show and Daguerreotype Book Release

   The Burns Archive was at the New York Photo Show this weekend 
after a tour of both the London and Washington DC fairs. The public was invited to attend the event Saturday, March 31 at The Lighthouse, 111 East 59th St, and stop by The Burns Archive booth to meet Dr. Burns and view books and images for sale.

Burns Press books (including the newly released Mirror, Mirror: The Burns Collection Daguerreotypes) were sold.

The aforementioned London Photo Fair:

Collector Andrew Daneman of Northern Light Gallery

Brad Feuerhelm of Daniel Blau Gallery

Finds from the Washington D.C. Antique Photo Show

Dr. Burns recently attended the Washington D.C. Antique Photo & Postcard Show to promote his Gem Series Books. Dr. Burns photographed the show as part of his decades long documentation of historical photography events. The Burns Archive and Collection will also have a booth at the upcoming New York Photo Show, where Dr. Burns will be signing his Civil War and Sleeping Beauty III books. He will also be presenting his new work Mirror, Mirror: The Burns Collection Daguerreotypes, which will be released in June. Pre-orders are now being accepted.

 Views from the  D.C. Antique Photo Show:

Postmortem Photography Exhibition at Allentown Art Museum

Gothic to Goth: Embracing the Dark Side
Tuesday - Saturday 11AM - 5PM, Sunday  12PM - 5PM, Monday Closed
Through April 29, 2012


Dr.Burns was scheduled to lecture, 4/19/12, 
on his postmortem and mourning photography collection.

Allentown Art Museum
31 North Fifth Street
Allentown, PA 18101


 

Curated By Soody Sisco

It might be said that death, art, and fashion went hand in hand in America in the nineteenth century. The death of George Washington in 1799 spurred an outpouring of public mourning that found expression in a new genre of art that encompassed memorial paintings, prints, public monuments, mourning kerchiefs, ceramics, and, not least, needlework. Mourning art was considered a beautiful and appropriate—even sophisticated and fashionable—art form rather than a frivolous or morbid fascination with death. It encouraged an interweaving of religious, social, and aesthetic ideas drawn from the neoclassical ideal of the “heroic death,” as well as the burgeoning Romantic Movement.  As literature with macabre gothic overtones gained popularity, emotional expressions of sentimentality, melancholy, and even horror and terror became commonplace.

The presentation of grief and sorrow became an art in itself in the Victorian era (1837 – 1901) as England’s Queen Victoria brought the expression of mourning to its zenith following the death of her husband, Prince Albert in 1861. On both sides of the Atlantic, elaborate mourning outfits became de rigeur, along with codified rituals for their wearing.  As the American public rapidly assimilated both the social mores and fashionable tastes of mourning, the late nineteenth century became widely known for its prominence of elaborate and ostentatious mourning fashion. Almost a hundred years later, the silhouettes and styles of Victorian mourning wear made a vigorous reappearance with the emergence of the Goth subculture in the late 1970s, although now with a vocabulary of nonconformity and self-expression rather than the moral obligations of earlier years.

Gothic to Goth offered an overview of the nineteenth-century cult of mourning in American art and fashion and indicates how that trend translated into contemporary Goth fashion, a genre now embraced by mainstream couture as well as by the rock subculture of the twentieth century. Included in the exhibition are representative examples of mourning art such as needle pictures, paintings, and postmortem daguerreotype portraits; mourning jewelry and other accessories; two late Victorian mourning outfits; and examples of contemporary Goth fashion inspired by the mourning excesses of the earlier century. Objects from the museum’s own collections were supplemented by loans from the Everhart Museum, Burns Archive, Lackawanna Historical Society, Sigal Museum, Drexel Historic Costume Collection, the designer Kambriel, Heavy Red Couture Noir and custom jewelry designer and manufacturer Atelier Gothique

Exhibition Opening: African American Portraits 1900-1920

Community Life: African American Portraits from the Burns Archive 1900-1920

and

Ming Smith: Film Noir  

Feb 1- February 12, 2012

Reception Thursday February 2, 6-8pm

 This exhibition was free and open to the public.

The National Arts Club

15 Gramercy Park South, New York, NY 10003

     In honor of African American History month, The National Arts Club Photography Committee presented a two-part exhibition. A group of photographs by contemporary photographer Ming Smith and a series of historic images from Dr. Stanley B Burns’ collection were on view.

     These images supplement the traveling exhibition currently on display at the New York State Museum in Albany: Shadows & Substance: African American Photographs from the Burns Collection and Archive. Since 1979, Dr. Burns’ pioneering exhibitions of African American photography have documented the proud middle and working classes and community life that have so long been absent from visual and written history of the early twentieth century.

     Ming Smith lives in Harlem and has traveled the world with her camera. Her journey is “emotionally packed” as Gordon Parks remarks, in his introduction to Ming’s book. From her Ohio childhood to the large cities of America, Europe, Africa and Asia she “continually taps the intuitive and renders it in a form that is coherent and accessible” (Susan Kismaric, MOMA, Ming- A Ming Breakfast, Preface 1991). Her series encompasses topics including jazz, the black experience, Harlem, Native America, Africa and Paris. Ming Smith’s photography belongs to a tradition that adheres to the belief that the photograph is grounded in the artist’s experience of the world.

If interested in historical African American photographs you may enjoy in these posts as well:

New York State Museum Exhibits Historic African American Photos from The Burns Archive

Rare African American Photographs from the Ken Ogden Holdings Added to  Collection

Teaming up for a Historic Forensic Project

     Dr. Stanley Burns and noted forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden met to discuss a joint volume on the photographic history of forensic science. This unique project will include Dr. Burns’ historic photos documenting the genesis of medical forensic studies from the 1860s on. These images will be combined with Dr. Baden’s own photographs taken over five decades of work as a medical examiner. Baden’s noted high-profile pathology and expert witness cases have included John F. Kennedy, Czar Nicholas II, Sid Vicious, OJ Simpson and John Belushi. Dr. Baden’s HBO’s Autopsy series is recognized as the first forensic television program. Burns’ photographs have been in numerous exhibitions on historical crime photography and featured on HBO’s Autopsy.

Dr. Michael Baden, Photo by ForensicScience.net

Dr. Stanley Burns Viewing the Baden Collection

Houston Dermatological Society: Dermatology in the 19th Century

On Monday, December 12, Stanley Burns MD, FACS lectured as guest speaker for the Houston Dermatological Society's annual ethics meeting in Houston, Texas.

Nineteenth Century Photography and its Role in the Creation of Modern Dermatology

The core of the lecture consisted of over 250 nineteenth century photographs of dermatological patients.

A Few Topics Discussed:

• Worldwide- Dermatologists produced more photographic atlases than all other medical fields combined.
• New York Dermatologists produced the greatest number of photographic atlases.
• New York’s George Henry Fox, one of the six founders of the American Dermatological Association, produced more atlases than any other physician. He influenced generations of dermatologists.
• Photography produced an objective detailed description.
• Provided a permanent document for future evaluation.
• Allowed non specialists to recognize skin disease.

Dr. Burns with HDS President Melissa Bogle, MD

Melissa Bogle, MD with Asra Ali, MD

The Attendees at Brennan's of Houston

Featured Images:

To Learn More About 19th Century Dermatology 

Read Dr. Burns' Four Volume Series 'Skin Pictures'

Photographing the Dead: Observatory Lecture Pics

A big thanks to everyone who attended The Burns Archive lecture and book signing at The Observatory last week. Warm gratitude goes to Joanna Ebenstein and volunteers from The Morbid Anatomy Library for hosting this wonderful event. If you were not able to make it before the event sold out, we look forward to presenting on more lectures in 2012. 

Joanna Ebenstein and Dr. Burns

Attendees at Photographing the Dead

Book Signing and Reception

Dr. Stanley Burns and Lissa Rivera of The Burns Archive

View slideshow below and tag yourself in our Picasa web album:

Upcoming Lecture Reminder: Photographing the Dead

THE HISTORY OF POSTMORTEM PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE BURNS COLLECTION AND ARCHIVE 

 
ILLUSTRATED LECTURE AND BOOK SIGNING WITH STANLEY B. BURNS, MD

 

 Observatory: 543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215
Monday, December 5th, 8:00pm, Admission: $5

 Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Postmortem photography, photographing a deceased person, was a common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These photographs, from the beginning of the practice until now, are special mementos that hold deep meaning for mourners through visually “embalming” the dead. Although postmortem photographs make up the largest group of nineteenth-century American genre photographs, until recent years they were largely unseen and unknown. Dr. Burns recognized the importance of this phenomenon in his early collecting when he bought his first postmortem photographs in 1976. Since that time he has amassed the most comprehensive collection of postmortem photography in the world and has curated several exhibits and published three books on the subject: the Sleeping Beauty series. Tonight, Dr. Burns will speak about the practice of postmortem photography from the 19th century until today and share hundreds of images from his collection.

These titles will be available for sale & signing at Observatory the night of the lecture:
 
Sleeping Beauty III Memorial Photography: The Children
Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement & The Family in Memorial Photography… 
Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R.B. Bontecou 
News Art: Manipulated Photographs from the Burns Archive
Deadly Intent, Crime & Punishment: Photographs from the Burns Archive 
Seeing Insanity: Photography & The Depiction of Mental Illness 

Below are a few more of the hundreds of images that will be discussed: 

     

About Sleeping Beauty: Dr. Burns’ first book on postmortem photography, Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (1990) has been widely recognized as one of the most important photography books of all time. Sleeping Beauty has influenced an eclectic array of fields, from bereavement counseling and education to cultural anthropology, history, medicine, philosophy, religion and spirituality (not to mention pop music) and has been cited in debates on the death penalty, euthanasia and abortion. It has been the subject of numerous scholarly papers as well as seminars and exhibitions at notable institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The New Museum of Contemporary Art. A decade later the Archive published Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement & The Family in Memorial Photography American & European Traditions in conjunction with an exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay. Sleeping Beauty III Memorial Photography: The Children, the third installment in this series was released this year to accompany a traveling exhibition.

The New York Review of Books: Someone Else's Children

The Burns Archive is pleased to announce our exhibition Reed Bontecou: Masterpieces of Civil War Portraiture and accompanying publication Shooting Soldiers have been covered by The New York Review of Books:

Someone Else’s Children

Christopher Benfey

November 28, 2011

My wife and I have two sons, aged eighteen and twenty-two. Both have registered for the Selective Service, as the law requires. (“Our objective is to register you,” the official letter reminded them, “not to have you prosecuted.”) We don’t have a clear idea of Tommy’s or Nicholas’s views regarding military service; we hope that circumstances won’t force us to find out. None of us knows any men or women currently serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. They are someone else’s children. We watch news reports of wounded veterans learning to walk with prosthetic limbs. Recent stories about body parts mislaid at the military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base fill us with outrage. Still, for many of us, it is a general, not an individualized outrage.

During the Civil War, in contrast, the mangling of young bodies was evident to all. Three million volunteers armed with advanced rifles, and firing at one another at point-blank range, fought on battlefields often not far from their own homes. American writers, many of whom had children in the war, were not insulated from the carnage. Fred Stowe was standing in the graveyard on Cemetery Ridge, above Gettysburg, when a live shell exploded near his ear, opening a wound that never healed. Charles Longfellow sought distraction from the trauma of the war in Yokohama, where he had a giant carp tattooed across his back, around the scars of two bullet holes. Emily Dickinson chose as her literary advisor a Union colonel suffering from PTSD: “We can find no scar,” she wrote in a famous poem, “But internal difference— / Where the Meanings, are.”

Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman served as nurses and eyewitness reporters in the hideous Union hospitals in Washington, D. C. Alcott contracted typhoid in the septic wards and wrote Little Women, about the daughters of a father wounded in the war, while treating herself with mercury. Whitman ministered to the needs of wounded soldiers while also keeping a careful visual record of everything he saw, “this other freight of helpless worn and wounded youth,” as he wrote to Emerson. “Doctors sawed arms & legs off from morning till night,” he reported in his journal. He was dismayed to see “a heap of feet, arms, legs, etc., under a tree in front of a hospital.” As he moved from bed to bed in the overcrowded wards, he was shocked by the youth of the victims. “Charles Miller, bed 19, company D, 53rd Pennsylvania, is only sixteen years of age, very bright, courageous boy, left leg amputated below the knee.”

The remarkable medical photographs of the Civil War surgeon-photographer Reed Bontecou—now published in their entirety for the first time and recently shown at The Robert Anderson gallery in New York—bring us closer still. Bontecou, from Troy, New York, was a classifier of seashells and an ornithologist who had traveled in the Amazon before the war collecting specimens. A pioneer in surgical procedures known for the dexterity and speed of his operations, he was also a photographer of genius. His iconic image, “A Morning’s Work,” shows a pile of amputated legs he himself had sawed off earlier that day. Bontecou’s albums served many ends, most obviously instruction, with before-and-after shots, in the identification and treatment of conditions like gangrene and bullets lodged in bone. But they also aided in the later identification of veterans for disbursement of disability and pension funds. Bontecou was apparently an engaging and capable administrator of army hospitals who was once threatened with disciplinary action for inviting a recovering Confederate officer to his home for Thanksgiving dinner.

Most poignant and painful is Bontecou’s artistic ability to capture the terror of his patients, what the editor and collector of medical photographs Stanley Burns, M.D., calls “individual bereavement.” Pvt. John Parmenter, unbearably young, lies prone on an army cot with his beautiful and vulnerable face turned towards us and his gangrenous foot propped up on a cushion. Then, in another photograph, we see him lying deathly pale and unconscious; a surgeon with his hand on one of Parmenter’s bent knees looks down thoughtfully at the severed foot. The picture has some of the bleak, geometrical power of Jacques-Louis David’s Death of Marat.

In another arresting image, Robert Fryer, eighteen years old and wearing his cap and uniform, all gold buttons carefully buttoned, holds his hand to his chest as though playfully mimicking a handgun. His features are deadpan. At first, we assume his hand is partially hidden in his jacket. But no, it’s an illusion, presumably deliberate on the part of the photographer. Fryer’s middle, ring, and little fingers are amputated. According to Bontecou’s notes, “Patient has good use of forefinger and thumb.” Perhaps he watched young Robert Fryer buttoning his coat.

The photographs are a bitter reminder of the hideous race between better medical response and ever more devastating weaponry. If, as Burns notes, the improvised explosive device (IED) has changed the way war is fought and the wounded treated today, the novelty of the Crimean War and the Civil War was the 58 caliber Minie Ball, named for its inventor, Claude-Etienne Minié. This was a war in which 94% of Union wounds were caused by bullets. The Minie Ball, Burns remarks, “shattered and fractured bone easily and commonly carried clothing and other debris with it into the wound, making infection a constant companion in almost every case.” Bontecou’s images “documented the battle against gunshot wounds,” at a time when battle armor was minimal or absent and two years before the discovery of the principles of antiseptic surgery in 1867. Burns adds grimly, “Many of the men we see here are going to die.”

There is another race on display in these photographs, between the sheer horror of the army hospital and our ability to find words and images adequate to the horror. “The real war,” Whitman wrote in Specimen Days, “will never get in the books.” The simple identification boards that many of Bontecou’s patients hold in their hands, with their name and company inscribed in white chalk, carry their own dire and individualized lyricism, as though to say, in Whitman’s resonant words: “I am the man, I suffered, I was there.” Andsell H. Beam, shot in the skull on April 6th, 1865, bows over his identification board as though in prayer, or in simple disbelief in his unfathomable fate. “Now that I have lived for 8 or 9 days amid such scenes as the camps furnish,” Whitman wrote his mother, “… really nothing we call trouble seems worth talking about.”

Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography By R.B. Bontecou by Dr. Stanley M. Burns has recently been published.

Civil War Book Review: Shooting Soldiers

Looking Wounded Soldiers in the Eye

Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R. B. Bontecou showcases the Civil War photography of Dr. Reed Brockway Bontecou, Surgeon-in-Charge of Harewood General Hospital in Washington, D.C. This book is the first in a series of Bontecou’s photographs of identified soldiers from 101 regiments from the Harewood Hospital Album.

While the photographs may be graphic to some readers, it documents the high cost that soldiers paid for what they believed in a country of united states. Bontecou’s photographs, or carte de visites (CDV) were a result of the order by Surgeon General William A. Hammond to document the cases that the surgeons worked on, their treatment, and their outcomes. Many of Bontecou’s photographs helped illustrated the post-war publication of The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion.

The artistry of Bontecou’s pictures has been recognized as among the highest levels of photographic art and helped make him a legend among medical photographers. “Due to their historical precedence there can be no doubt that Bontecou’s carte de visite album is the premier medical photograph album of the Civil War” (8). Included among the images are close-ups of patients in the OR and of surgeries in progress the earliest known of such views.

This volume also contains a sketch of Bontecou’s career, a history of the various images, and a brief summary of the last campaigns of the war. Each of the images identifies the soldier, what unit he belonged to, his wound, where received and date, treatment, and outcome. Some of the images have more information than others. The last few pages of the book list the battles, from the Wilderness to Appomattox, the soldiers in this book, their unit and plate number. Also included in this section are those with no battle listed and those who died of disease (not in battle). This book represents the earliest efforts of one physician to document war-related wounds and, by the use of photography, present to fellow physicians a way of caring for those wounds.

Shooting Soldiers is a well-written, fast and easy-to- read book. Each image gives the reader a look into the tragic costs of the most turbulent time in America’s history.

The author of this book, Dr. Stanley B. Burns, M.D., an internationally known historian, publisher, and archivist, is an ophthalmologist in New York City and Clinical Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center.

Peter J. D’Onofrio, Ph.D. is the president of the Society of Civil War Soldiers, Inc., the largest non-profit, tax-exempt, international educational group dedicated to the study and preservation of Civil War era medical and surgical techniques and the professionals who performed those techniques. He is also the editor/publisher of the Society’s quarterly Journal of Civil War Medicine. He can be reached at socwsurgeons@aol.com or through the web site at www.civilwarsurgeons.org.

To Learn more about Civil War Book Review, Louisiana State University Libraries' Special Collections please visit www.cwbr.com

To Purchase Shooting Soldiers, visit our online book store http://burnspress.com/

UPCOMING LECTURE: PHOTOGRAPHING THE DEAD

THE HISTORY OF POSTMORTEM PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE BURNS COLLECTION AND ARCHIVE 

 
ILLUSTRATED LECTURE AND BOOK SIGNING WITH STANLEY B. BURNS, MD

 

 Observatory: 543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215
Monday, December 5th, 8:00pm, Admission: $5

 Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Postmortem photography, photographing a deceased person, was a common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These photographs, from the beginning of the practice until now, are special mementos that hold deep meaning for mourners through visually “embalming” the dead. Although postmortem photographs make up the largest group of nineteenth-century American genre photographs, until recent years they were largely unseen and unknown. Dr. Burns recognized the importance of this phenomenon in his early collecting when he bought his first postmortem photographs in 1976. Since that time he has amassed the most comprehensive collection of postmortem photography in the world and has curated several exhibits and published three books on the subject: the Sleeping Beauty series. Tonight, Dr. Burns will speak about the practice of postmortem photography from the 19th century until today and share hundreds of images from his collection.

About Sleeping Beauty: Dr. Burns’ first book on postmortem photography, Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (1990) has been widely recognized as one of the most important photography books of all time. Sleeping Beauty has influenced an eclectic array of fields, from bereavement counseling and education to cultural anthropology, history, medicine, philosophy, religion and spirituality (not to mention pop music) and has been cited in debates on the death penalty, euthanasia and abortion. It has been the subject of numerous scholarly papers as well as seminars and exhibitions at notable institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The New Museum of Contemporary Art. A decade later the Archive published Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement & The Family in Memorial Photography American & European Traditions in conjunction with an exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay. Sleeping Beauty III Memorial Photography: The Children, the third installment in this series was released this year to accompany a traveling exhibition.

To learn about Burns Archive Press titles PLEASE VISIT OUR ONLINE BOOK STORE

These titles will be available for sale & signing at Observatory the night of the lecture:
 
Sleeping Beauty III Memorial Photography: The Children
Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement & The Family in Memorial Photography… 
Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R.B. Bontecou 
News Art: Manipulated Photographs from the Burns Archive
Deadly Intent, Crime & Punishment: Photographs from the Burns Archive 
Seeing Insanity: Photography & The Depiction of Mental Illness 

Below are a few of the hundreds of images that will be discussed: 

     

Mirrors and Reflections: Reception Tomorrow Night

RECEPTION NOVEMBER 17, 6-8 PM
November 17, 2011 through January 7, 2012  

Robert Anderson Gallery, 24 West 57th Street, Suite 503, New York, NY, 10019

Mirrors and Reflections:

A Group Show Curated by Evelyne Z. Daitz of the Witkin Gallery and and Alison Bradley

Inspired by Edward Steichen’s photograph, The Little Round Mirror, 1906, Mirrors and Reflections is a tour de force of photographs of reflective surfaces of all sorts. Just as the mirror is integral to the camera, so it seems photographers are inseparable from their fascination with mirrored images. Water, mirrors, glass, open windows seen through mirrors, iconic buildings reflected in puddles, portraiture, and landscapes writ large the exhibition includes work by artists such as Atget, Brassai, Rudy Burckhardt, Elliott Erwitt, Lillian Bassman, Michael Eastman, Andre Kertesz, Steichen, Wayne Source, George Tice, Barbara Mensch, Joan Murray, Geoff Winningham, and Henry Wolf, self portraits by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Eduard Boubat and anonymous photographs as well as a 19th Century hand painted image of Geishas. Robert Anderson Gallery is very happy to be working with Curator Evelyne Z. Daitz, Witkin Gallery, on this special holiday show. 

The Burns Collection is participating with four vintage photographs.

This exhibition is a great opportunity to view a spectacular line-up of photographers.

Here is a preview of the photographs on display from The Burns Collection, including a rare hand-tinted albumen print by Kusakabe Kimbei:

Exhibition Update: Shadow and Substance at the NY State Museum

New York State Museum Photography Gallery

222 Madison Ave, Albany, NY 12230.

Saturday, October 15, 2011 - Saturday, March 31, 2012 

Monday - Saturday, 9:30 AM - 5:00 PM 
Closed Sundays 
Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day

The 113 images in Shadow and Substance include portraits, snapshots and photographs documenting industries, property and events related to the African-American experience from the beginning of photography to today.

Originally presented by the Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis, and curated by Modupe Labode, Ph.D., History and Public Scholar of African-American History at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, the exhibition focuses on a wide range of themes: Bondage and Freedom; Civil War and Reconstruction; The Nadir; Jim Crow and Lynching; Community Life; Family Albums; Black Reflections on Black life; and Celebrations.

Here is a preview slideshow of the installation at The New York State Museum:

 To Learn More About This Traveling Exhibition and How You Can Participate

Please Visit HERE

Bellevue Literary Review 10th Anniversary Celebration

A unique contribution to both literature and medicine, the Bellevue Literary Review publishes works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that touch upon relationships to illness, health, and healing. It is published by the Department of Medicine twice a year. Over the past decade, the BLR has flourished, becoming a prominent voice in the field of narrative medicine and in the literary magazine community at large.

The Bellevue Literary Review celebrated their 10th anniversary with a reading followed by a reception at The Bellevue Hospital Rotunda in New York City this past Sunday, October 30.
 

Slide Show of the Reading and Celebration (click images to enlarge):


Readers Featured:

Paul Harding’s novel, Tinkers, published by the Bellevue Literary Press, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers. He has taught writing at Harvard University, The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Grinnell College. His second novel, Enon, is forthcoming.

David Oshinsky holds the Jack S. Blanton Chair in History at the University of Texas and is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University. His books include Polio: An American Story, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2006. His essays and reviews appear regularly in The New York Times and other publications.

Louise Blecher Rose has published a novel, The Launching of Barbara Fabrikant, and a number of stories in Redbook Magazine. She taught in the Columbia Undergraduate Writing program for twenty-five years, received an NEA grant for a second novel, and is currently teaching literature and creative writing in Brooklyn and Patchogue at St. Joseph’s College.

Hal Sirowitz is the author of six collections of poetry with one forthcoming from Backwaters Press in Nebraska. He also has poems in an anthology, Beauty Is a Verb, which is about disabilities.

Rachel Hadas is Board of Governors Professor of English at the Newark campus of Rutgers University. The most recent among her many books is a volume of poetry, The Ache of AppetiteStrange Relation: A Memoir of Marriage, Dementia, and Poetry (Copper Beech Press) and a memoir, (Paul Dry Books).

To learn more about The Bellevue Literary Review and The Burns Archive Prize for Nonfiction (supported by Stanley B. Burns, MD) Click HERE.

American Academy of Ophthalmology Exhibition

The American Academy of Ophthalmology's Museum of Vision presented “Picturing the Eye: Ophthalmic Photography and Film,” an exhibit focused on the extraordinary power of ophthalmic imaging. While images of eyes and eye disease have been made almost since man was able to draw, the superiority of photography and film to capture the exact nature of disease and its cure is without parallel.

A concise history of the profession highlighting some major achievements and iconic photographs will be on display from Stanley B. Burns, MD and the Burns Archive – the nation's largest collection of medical photography. The Museum of Vision will exhibit camera equipment, period photographs, stereographs the Ophthalmic Photographers' Society, entitled “Our Ophthalmic Heritage: The Evolution of Ophthalmic Imaging.”

“Both the exhibit and the accompanying symposium are completely unique ways to illustrate a truly fascinating part of our ophthalmic heritage,” said Jenny Benjamin, Director of the Museum of Vision. “While images of eyes and eye disease have been created since the dawn of humankind, the greatness of photography and film in capturing the exact nature of disease and its cure is without parallel.”

View images from the American Academy of Ophthalmology Annual Meeting in the slide show below (click to to enlarge images):

To learn more about the history of Ophthalmic Photography read 

Dr. Burns' Ophthalmology: A Photographic History 1845-1945

And Visit The Museum of Vision

655 Beach Street  San Francisco, CA