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Civil War Re-enacting in the 1980’s

Civil War Re-enacting in 1980’s America, a personal view.

Elsewhere in this website there is a section that documents my experiences with the archeological community in Kampsville, Illinois.   While working with those researchers I was exposed work that was sometimes referred to as “experimental ”.  

These were the folks that worked at trying to reproduce pre-historic tools, pots, dwellings, and lifestyles by attempting to reproduce them using templates found in the archaeological record.  About midway through my undergraduate studies I took a course in “alternative photographic processes”.  The non-mainstream processes we studied were in fact mostly abandoned methods of making images that had been used in the 19th century and were abandoned as newer, faster and easier photographic processes were invented.  However, some of these obsoleted processes have a unique imaging quality and aesthetic, that from an artistic point of view make them worth the effort to learn and work with.  It was during that semester I saw a flyer promoting a weekend of Civil War reenactment in the nearby town of Makanda, Illinois.  I now know how trite the images can be if one is not careful, but at the time I thought “people dressed up in 19th century clothing is perfect subject matter for tasking 19th century like photographs”.

Yes, I did make some cheesy and obvious photographs at that first re-enactment.  But, I was also introduced to the “living history” community that was flourishing in America, at that point in time.  As I progressed through my undergraduate degree and then on to my graduate degrees, my focus definitely shifted towards understanding photographic history. Living and working among these avid history buffs gave me the opportunity to make images, and through re-creation get a better understanding of the aesthetics of the images made during that period of time.  So began the journey of many portraits.

From 1981 to 1984 I attended re-enactments in Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, and Virginia.  I traveled with a complete 4×5 darkroom squeezed into a Ford Fiesta.  During the day I walked the fields and encampments making images.  At night, I turned an unsuspecting cheap hotel room into a darkroom where I processed the film and made finished prints to be sold the next day.  This was my method of self-funding the project.  This need for revenue probably also had an effect on the aesthetics of the images.  Forty years later, looking at these images I can pick out some of the images that were made where I had to pander to the wants of the person(s) being photographed.  Fortunately, this was not always the case.

One last set of thoughts before I present the images.  Please do not judge the actions and deeds of the people depicted in these images through a 2020 lens of political correctness.  Popular culture of that time presented the whole mythology of the southern soldier in a completely different light.  Most of the folks doing re-enacting really did not care whose side they re-created.  In fact, there was a whole cadre of reenactors that took no sides at all such as the Sutlers, Tin Smiths, Blacksmiths and others who were just there to enjoy a popular hobby based on a love of history.  At the height of popularity in the 1990’s the annual event at Gettysburg, PA would draw as many as 50,000 reenactors and tens of thousands of spectators willing to pay $40.00 each to witness a re-enactment of that famous battle.  Over the past few years even though interest in the Civil War remains high, participation in Civil War re-enacting has almost died off. This year at Gettysburg, for the first time in almost 150 years there were no reenactors.  The hobby might be dying off with the aging participants.  But Here, I present to you a personal view of the hobby in the 1980’s.

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