The Front of Kenesaw Mountain, GA
Medium
Albumen print, plate 31 from the album "Photographic Views of the Sherman Campaign" (1866)
Dimensions
Image/paper: 25.5 × 35.7 cm (10 1/16 × 14 1/16 in.); Album page: 40.9 × 50.9 cm (16 1/8 × 20 1/16 in.)
Classification
albumen silver print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
145469
Art Historical Context
George N. Barnard’s *The Front of Kenes Mountain, GA* (1866) offers a stark, panoramic view of the Georgia landscape scarred by the American Civil War. Captured as an albumen print—plate 31 from Barnard’s seminal album *Photographic Views of the Sherman*—this 25.5 × 35.7 cm image freezes the rugged front of Kennesaw Mountain a pivotal site in Union General William T. Sherman’s 1864 Atlanta Campaign. Barnard, a pioneering photographer who served with the Union Army’s topographical engineers, documented the war’s aftermath with unflinching clarity, turning battlefield terrain into enduring visua...
About the Artist
George N. Barnard · 1819–present
George N. Barnard (1819–1902) was a pioneering American photographer whose six-decade career spanned the dawn of the medium, from daguerreotypes to Civil War documentation. Born into a farming family in Coventry, Connecticut, on December 23, 1819, he lost his father at age seven and apprenticed in family businesses before marrying in 1843 and relocating to Oswego, New York. There, he launched one ...