Center for Civil War Photography Helps Produce Special Pry House Exhibition

Oct. 22, 2012 - PRLog -- A Center for Civil War Photography-produced digital slide program of the 3-D photos of Antietam by Alexander Gardner is the centerpiece of a special photography exhibition at the Pry House museum near the Antietam battlefield.  “Bringing the Story of War to Our Doorsteps – Rediscovering Alexander Gardner’s Antietam Photographs” features reproductions of Gardner’s images of the dead after the battle of Antietam as well as five vintage, original Gardner Antietam prints. The exhibition also features information panels as well the digital slide show.

The exhibition was produced by Robert Kozak of Frederick Civil War Roundtable, with assistance from CCWP President Bob Zeller and Imaging Director John Richter, as well as Hood College, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and Antietam National Battlefield.

The exhibition is designed to both recreate and expound on the original October 1862 exhibition of Gardner’s Antietam photos at Mathew B. Brady’s New York gallery, which electrified the city. “If Brady has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along the streets, he has done something very like it,” the New York Times reported on Oct. 20, 1862. Gardner took about 120 photographs during the Maryland campaign, including 80 in stereo, among them all 20 of the images of the dead. The CCWP show features some of these images.

The exhibition is featured in the two upstairs rooms of the Pry House museum, including the bedroom where Gen. Israel Richardson died after being wounded in the battle. The exhibition will continue at least through Dec. 1 at the Pry House, located off Route 34 in Keedysville, Md., at 18906 Shepherdstown Pike.