An extraordinary collection of period photographs David L. Hack Collection is complemented by the contemporary Civil War Redux: Pinhole Photographs by Willie Anne Wright, featuring pinhole photographs by Virginia photographer Willie Anne Wright. Pinhole photographs are created when light, reflecting off of a subject and entering a darkened enclosed box through a tiny hole – the “pinhole” – creates an inverted visible image of that subject which registers on a surface parallel to the plane of the pinhole. This method requires longer exposure times, eight seconds in bright sun, and when light-sensitive photographic materials are placed on that parallel plane, the image is then recorded.

Using this process, Wright followed “the troops” – Civil War re-enactors – to many major re-enactments. The Describing her work, Wright says, “I felt an affinity with the photographers of the mid-19th century whose use of wet plate photography was equally time-consuming. My subjects, as those of Mathew Brady and others of the period, did not include battle action. I concentrated on capturing camp scenes, picturing impressions of personages both famous and little known, medical and death- related images, and portrayals of widows. My approach was even-handed. The images include those of men and women, Caucasian and African American, Yankees and Rebels.”

This is a traveling exhibition of the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia. http://www.chrysler.org/