“Photography and the American Civil War” in New Orleans!

The extraordinary exhibition, “Photography and the American Civil War” opened at the New Orleans Museum of Art on January 30th. Dr. Burns and staff travelled to the opening, despite a snowstorm that cancelled flights and closed roads. 

Also able to escape a frigid New York for a freezing New Orleans was Jeff Rosenheim, Chief Curator of Photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and curator of the exhibition. Russell Lord, Curator of Photographs at NOMA graciously hosted two receptions, and, with Jeff, led a tour through the galleries. 

The exhibition showcases photographs of wounded Civil War soldiers from The Burns Collection, as well as hundreds of amazing images from the era. 

It was also a pleasure to see Sarah Simms former employee of The Burns Archive! She worked with Dr. Burns on the book, Shooting Soldiers, Civil War Medical Photography by R.B. Bontecou.

If you missed it in New York and Charleston, see it in New Orleans until May 4, 2014! 

http://noma.org/exhibitions/detail/77/Photography-and-the-American-Civil-War

 

Russel Lord, Stanley B. Burns, MD & Jeff Rosenhei

Reed Bontecou: Masterpieces of Civil War Portraiture at The Robert Anderson Gallery

     The Burns Archive is pleased to announce the opening of the first major commercial exhibition of Reed B. Bontecou, MD’s Civil War photography. Bontecou’s photographs challenge the master photographers of his era.
 

Sepember 28 - Nov 12, 2011  

Reception Oct 6, 6-8pm

Robert Anderson Gallery24 West 57th Street, Suite 503
New York, NY, 10019
Hours: 11am -6pm, Tues - Saturday

Robert Anderson Gallery Press Release:

The 43 albumen photographs on view at Robert Anderson Gallery compromise a rare, and for the most part, first time ever public view of the unique medical images by Reed Brockway Bontecou, MD, Surgeon in-Charge of Harewood U.S. Army General Hospital, Washington, D.C., from the Collection of Stanley B. Burns, MD.  In recognition of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, Robert Anderson Gallery offers this rare collection of albumen portraits and cartes de visites of wounded soldiers, selected from Bontecou’s personal albums.  The photographs represent a unique opportunity to view some of the most moving documents of the Civil War and the associated human casualties. 

Reed Bontecou was responsible for pioneering, and taking, the largest number of photographs of wounded soldiers during the Civil War and was the single largest contributor of photographs and specimens to the Army Medical Museum and medical publications of the time. His close up images of surgery, anesthesia, and patients posing with their pathological specimens were unique to his time. Many photographs are of patients pre- and post- operation, views of patients showing the progression of specific treatments, or the various stages of diseases. After the war he organized his photographs into albums laying them out, anatomically from head to foot wounds, and loosely alphabetically by soldier’s name.

Bontecou’s images are beautifully posed, and the sitters seem almost serene in his gaze, elevating clinical photography to an art form. They speak a universal language of war, or rather, what it can do in human terms. Bontecou was a master of exposing the nature of the sitter. Beyond the wounds, the amputations, and the gangrene, the subject is presented as naturally as possible. It should be noted that smiling in photographs during this early period was very rare and the subject put on his best expression. Some images are further enhanced by Bontecou’s own red pen, detailing the trajectory of the bullet that impacted on the patient. These images, with the hand drawn lines, were part of his personal Harewood Hospital teaching album.

Also on view are his Cartes de Visites, an amazing visual document of the medical aspects of war and examples not equaled until fifty years later during WW1. The CDV album is the pioneering effort by one physician to document war wounds and to use photography to teach physicians how to care for these wounds. Due to their historical precedence there can be no doubt that Bontecou’s CDV album, kept at Harewood U. S. A. General hospital, is the premier medical photograph album of the Civil War.  No other large compilations of war-time clinical images exist, with over 570 images. On view will be one page of the album, comprised of 12 single CDVs, and four single CDVs from The Amy Medical Museum, Photographs Contributed by R. B. Bontecou.

The Wall Street Journal Reviews Burns Archive Exhibit:

Dr. R.B. Bontecou's photo of Pvt. Robert Fryer

Shadows and Light Somewhere in Time
Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2011
by William Meyers

Their faces are as telling as the wounds they suffered. Unlike Mathew Brady, who was a commercial photographer, Reed B. Bontecou was an army doctor: He took photographs of wounded Civil War soldiers in the first systematic attempt to study combat injuries and the procedures used to treat them. 

"Robert Fryer, private, Co. G, 52d N.Y. Vols., aged 18" stares at us from an oval frame. His kepi is on his head, and against his uniform jacket with its long row of brass buttons he holds his right hand: Only his thumb and forefinger are left. His look expresses neither pain nor self-pity, but his troubled attempt to understand his experience. 

There are two pictures of "David R. Templeton, Private Company A, 46 N.Y Vols., age 16, …. with gunshot wound of the head." 

The first must have been taken soon after he lost his eye, since the left side of his face is covered with blood and he seems to be suffering.
In the second photo, he has been cleaned up and dressed, his hair combed, but his one open eye expresses the same dazed puzzlement as Pvt. Fryer. 

Other soldiers have other parts of their bodies violated or missing. Dr. Bontecou's brief descriptions of where and how each patient was injured, the treatment he received and the outcome—"parts healed kindly," "gradually sank and died"—are posted in notebooks attached to the display cases. 

Excerpts from Walt Whitman's "Specimen Days" describing his experiences working as a nurse in Union military hospitals provide context. The photographs come from the extraordinary collection of Stanley Burns, a New York physician.

Civil War Exhibit Extended Until August 29

NEW YORK'S CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS

Photographs of Dr. R. B. Bontecou, Words of Walt Whitman. 

EXTENDED THROUGH AUGUST 29, 2011

Merchant's House Museum, 29 East Fourth Street, NY, NY

From Broadway World.com

Thanks to an overwhelming response from visitors, the Merchant's House Museum, in partnership with The Burns Archive, will extend the exhibition of photographs of wounded New York soldiers by army surgeon and native New Yorker Dr. Reed B. Bontecou that opened in April to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. More-than 100 images of human ruination are captioned with quotations from Walt Whitman's 1882 memoir, Specimen Days, in which he recounts his own horrifying experience as a volunteer nurse. According to Whitman, "The real war will never get in the books."

William Stewart, 3 NY Independent Battery.
 Aged 20 years, wounded at Petersburg, March 25, 1865.
Gun shot wound of humerus, resection of head of right humerus. 

A View of One of the Displays of Bontecou's Photographs
on Exhibit at the Merchant's House Museum.

New York Times: The Local East Village Covers Burns Archive Civil War Exhibit

Selections from The Burns Archives. Montage by Tim Milk. All photos courtesy The Burns Archive.

We are pleased to announce that our exhibition at The Merchant's House Museum was featured by The New York Times Local by Tim Milk. To read the article The Pain of War at The Merchants House click HERE.

If you still haven't made it to The Merchant's House to see the exhibit there is still time!

New York's Civil War Soldiers – 

Photographs of Dr. R. B. Bontecou, Words of Walt Whitman.

Through Monday, August 1

Merchant's House Museum

29 East Fourth Street, New York, NY 10003

Open 12 to 5 p.m., Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday. 


To purchase our new photography book Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R. B. Bontecou visit www.burnspress.com.

WNYC NEWS: THE BURNS ARCHIVE CIVIL WAR EXHIBITION

Merchant's House to Display Photos of New York Civil War Regiment Soldiers

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

By Julia Botero

On April 13, 1861, the U.S. Army garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina surrendered to Confederate troops. Two days later, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 militiamen to pick up their rifles and squelch the southern rebellion. The American Civil War was on.  

In honor of the soldiers who put their lives on the line in the ensuing four years of war, the Merchant's House Museum in Manhattan is presenting a series of photographs of wounded Civil War soldiers who served in New York regiments. The exhibit marks the first time any of the photographs will be displayed to the public in the 150 years since the war.  

Military historian and Civil War reenactor Robert Mulligan, who is from Albany, said the New York battalions included some notable troops.  

"One was in the box with Lincoln when Lincoln was shot, and another was the first union officer killed in the war, Elmer Ellsworth," he said.  

Each photograph at the Merchant's House Museum exhibit was taken by Reed Brockway Bontecou, who was the surgeon in charge of Washington, D.C.'s Harewood U.S. Army General Hospital. When the war ended, the photographs became the largest part of the government’s war medical photograph collection.  

Mulligan has for years played the roles of Corporal James Tamer of the 86th New York Infantry and Sargent Rice C. Bull of the 103rd New York Infantry. Bull was injured in battle and Tamer lost both of his feet, but Mulligan doubted that either of the men passed through Bontecou's hospital.  

"It was a hub of medical treatment, but I'd be surprised to find their photographs," he said. "There were just too many injured soldiers."  

In 1975, a New York City ophthalmologist who had taken an interest to collecting historical photographs, Stanley B. Burns, acquired the photographs from the Bontecou family. He soon established the distinguished Burns Collection, which has since become the nation’s largest private comprehensive collection of early medical photography.  

Dr. Burns has published two (of three) volumes of the Bontecou photographs. The most recent one, "Shooting Soldiers: The Civil War Medical Photography of Reed Bontecou," will be released on Thursday to coincide with the opening of the Merchant's House exhibition.   

At the exhibit, more then 100 graphic photographs of human disfigurement will be accompanied by passages from Walt Whitman's "Specimen Days,"  a memoir of his horrific experiences as a volunteer nurse. Along with other images and memorabilia of the time, the words tell the real story of the Civil War that Whitman said would "never get into the books."

To see the article on the WNYC website and view the slide show click HERE