Ruins of the Circular Church

One of the puzzles of Barnardiana is why the photographer made so many nearly identical views of the same scene.

This one looks east from near King Street toward the Circular Congregational Church. Barnard's assistant is in it again — this time with a mustache and goatee, and a long-stemmed clay churchwarden pipe.

It appears to have been taken in mid-March, in the late afternoon, like the view on the following page, with the same man simply changing his clothes between exposures. Barnard changed lenses or shifted the camera for a slightly different perspective.

The shadows settle the interval: about thirty minutes between the two plates. That is the useful thing about a photograph made outdoors on a known date — the sun writes the time into it, and a careful comparison of two shadows will order and space a pair of undated exposures more precisely than any catalog entry.