The Works at a Distance

Marsh grass and a wide flat foreground, and along the far edge a thin pale line of earthwork under an empty sky — the fortifications of Morris Island seen from far enough away to look like nothing at all.

This is the honest scale of the place. The works that cost a summer to take and a year and a half to hold occupy, from a few hundred yards off, about a fortieth of the picture. The photographer knew it; the plate is mostly ground and weather, which is mostly what Morris Island was.