Another Camera at Fort Putnam

The same corner of Fort Putnam as the stereograph published alongside — the same bombproof door, the same guns, the same boxes against the parapet — but not the same photograph. Here the men have left their posts and gathered into a loose group between the guns, sitting and standing at ease; a figure rests in the bombproof doorway. The negative belongs to a different series in the Library of Congress from its near-twin, and the exposure was its own.

The pair is worth publishing together for what it says about how these pictures got made. A photographer on Morris Island in 1865 did not take one plate of a subject; he worked the scene while the light held, and the garrison drifted between posing and resting as he did. Two negatives, minutes apart, ended up filed in two different collections under nearly the same words — and only the men, standing differently in each, say which is which.

The emulsion has suffered badly across the sky, a spreading black loss the scan records faithfully. It is left as it is; the damage is part of the object.