A Note on Photography at Antietam National Battlefield Park

Reposted from my Fine Art America blog: http://fineartamerica.com/blogs/a-note-on-photography-at-antietam-national-battlefield-park.html

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A Note on Photography at Antietam National Battlefield Park

March 7th, 2011 - 01:56 PM

Web search "Antietam tranquil" and your search utility will return an appropriate page right quick, but "tranquil" though it be, "haunted" yet may be more like the truth. In the vicinity of the property illustrated in the photo accompanying this note, " . . . William Roulette had over 700 soldiers buried on his farm. Grave markings were haphazard; stone piles, rough-hewn crosses and wooden headboards . . . ." [1]. Even if thoroughly reinterred in the Washington Confederate Cemetary at Rosehill Cemetary in Hagerstown, Maryland, their presence seems yet to me within the land.

Supporting the character of the 19th Century landscape and its history have been the efforts of battlefield preservationists. This note comes from Tom Clemens writing for Civil War News: " . . . not only is Antietam the best preserved battlefield in the East, and possibly in the National Park Service, but it is a model of national, state and private partnership" [2]. That the park is quiet and its landscape from many positions and perspectives minimally altered by evidence of the 20th Century, much less our 21st, has come about through deliberate effort to keep it so.

Reference

1. WHILBR. "Confederate Soldiers Who Died in Maryland."
2. Clemens, Tom. "Success at Antietam." Civil War News, December 2009.