Street Scene, Culpeper, Virginia
Andrew Joseph Russell American
Few wartime photographs reveal as much about the rhythm of street life in the 1860s as this chaotic urban landscape. Located seventy miles south west of Washington, D.C., the town of Culpeper, Virginia, was first surveyed in 1749 by sixteen-year-old George Washington. During the war, Culpeper changed hands from Confederate to Union and back again numerous times. Both sides regularly marched their armies through Culpeper and fought and camped nearby to protect it. The slightly elevated viewpoint in this surprisingly modern-style photograph suggests that Russell may have set up his camera and tripod on the bed of his portable darkroom wagon.
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