Full Frontal Laughter

All those who would go out in a driving rain to hear a lecture on Civil War photography, say aye.

That would be a chorus of about a dozen and a half of us tonight at the Museum of the Confederacy's Citizen School Lecture.

And for those of you who weren't there, you missed not only a fascinating up-close look at RVA images from the Library of Congress' photography collection, but one hell of an hysterical running commentary.

That came courtesy of Mike Gorman, a Park Ranger at Richmond Battlefield Park, and a highly entertaining guy who spoke on "Richmond Again Taken: Photographing the Confederate Capital."

No, he did not wear his uniform.

He did get right to the point, showing us photos of Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner. Alexander who?

"If you take away only one thing tonight, it's this. Matthew Brady was blind as a bat. He never took a Civil War photograph. He hired people to do that."

People like Gardener it turns out. I was already feeling better informed.

Gorman was the best kind of photo geek, the kind who makes self-deprecating remarks about his lack of life allowing him endless time to blow up pictures, examine details and figure out specifics.

And loving every minute of it.

The topic of the talk, how photographers flocked to Richmond once it had fallen to shoot the last vestiges of the Lost Cause, explained one major photography omission.

There are no photographs  of Lee surrendering because all the photographers were in RVA shooting the charred remains (not nearly as extensive as the rest of the country believed) of the Confederate capital.

That turned out to be a bad call; they were all hoping to make a fortune shooting the fallen city and selling the pictures to their prime market: former soldiers.

The problem with that was that a soldier made $16 a month by the end of the war and a picture cost $1.50.

Do the math. No soldier could afford $1.50 for one picture.

Lee would have been the moneymaker, but no one got the shot. We now call that epic fail.

What I loved about the photos we were shown was seeing them blown up to expose the smallest details, a feat that tickled Gorman even more than it did me.

A shot of Tredegar Iron Works, when shown in detail, reveals Madison's tomb at Hollywood Cemetery almost a mile away.

But almost every picture was like that. Shots of buildings revealed handbills you could read, street urchins mugging for the camera or a view inside a window of a clock's face with the time visible.

A picture of Lee wearing white socks with black shoes was marked "Do Not Use." Gentlemen know better than to make the white sock faux pas and no decent photographer was going to flaunt his oversight.

One recurring motif was Matthew Brady himself with his pointy beard and top hat showing up somewhere in the frame.

Gorman called him the "Where's Waldo?" of the Civil War-era.

The man had witticisms to cover every occasion, like when he showed a shot across the canal basin toward the Capital.

Asking his audience what the blob in the water was, he clicked his pointer and the words "Nasty dead horse" appeared in red.

The photographer had taken two pictures of this view minutes apart, both with N.D.H., so Gorman had made them into the Civil War-era's only "movie."

He ran it repeatedly to show us "motion." I'm telling you, the guy had a sense of humor and impeccable delivery.

I can't remember the last time I went to a lecture and laughed out loud so many times.

And just to make sure he left us on a high note, the last photo was of a naked man, no doubt a soldier, standing in the water (maybe the canal basin, although I saw no nasty dead horses) looking right at at the photographer.

Call me what you will, but I'm all about some full-frontal exposure to history and the art of photography.