Crest of Pine Mountain, Where General Polk Fell, from Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)

Walker uses the medium of cut-paper silhouette, traditionally associated with nineteenth-century portrait profiles of upper-middle-class sitters, to construct complex, provocative narratives of race and gender derived from antebellum stereotypes and prejudices. The graceful lines of her forms serve as a foil to the more disturbing nature of her subjects. While she generally works with life-size cutouts installed on the wall, she has also made a number of prints and portfolios.

This image is from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs and screenprints that directly addresses Walker’s ongoing interest in Civil War representation. She enlarged pages from Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War, a commemorative, pro-Union history of the war published in two volumes in 1866 and 1868, and overlaid them with her own silhouetted images. Walker’s bold and often unnerving incursions make African Americans central participants in her account of the war and suggest a perspective omitted from the historical record.