Sometimes it pays to work at a museum/historical association. Our library holds a wonderful book I just discovered, titled Gettysburg: Memory, Market, and an American Shrine by Jim Weeks. This book records not the history of Gettysburg during the battle like pretty much every other book I've seen, instead it records how the town became tourist destination #1 for so many Americans directly after the battle and up to today. The battlefield was first marketed to the same "genteels" (wealthy Americans of leisure), including artists and writers, who went to places like the Hudson River Valley, Niagara Falls, and the White Mountains of NH in the 1800s to experience the "sublime" American landscape. According to Weeks, Gettysburg has since the battle been operating in a strange market where the sacred and the secular are advertised at the same time.
Weeks writes that the National Park Service is currently working on a "restoration" project in the battlefields, in which they will remove 576 acres of "non-historic trees," re-plant 115 acres of "historic" trees, and replace 160 acres of orchards, using ornamental instead of fruit-bearing trees. They will also maintain firewood lots and thickets to appear as they did during battle. Says Weeks in his book, "What visitors will see is not the 1863 battlefield, but a hyperreal version of it that conforms to their image of the original. The simulation will be an 'airbrushed' improvement on the original without authentic blemishes or unpleasantries."
The NPS is doing this to enhance people's "experience" of the battle, to create a sanitized and, dare I say it, a "Disney-fied" version of history. Weeks mentions that the newfound interest in this kind of restoration comes from visitor's preconceived notions of what they will see at the battlefields, thanks to film series like Ken Burns' Civil War and the book The Killer Angels.
Good stuff. It's getting me thinking.
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5 comments:
"Unpleasantries" like dead bodies!
War is hell and no one "wins". The Civil War was a brutal war where brothers killed brothers.
Gettysburg is not someplace I'd visit on vacation. It is somewhere I'd go to remember to not have history repeat itself.
Sorry about the deleted comments, I'm still trying to figure out this posting stuff.
How interesting - disney-esque battle fields. I'm sure that DID get you thinking - I can't wait to see where it takes you in your work.
How are your photographs of Gettysburg similar and different? By printing on glass through archaic processes how are you influencing how the viewer sees and feels about this place?
Hi Kevin!
Your posts are great, I'm particularly interested in these new ideas for your work. The Gettysburg "facts" are wild, there is something so artificial about our inclination to idealize a historical place, especially at a time when we're stuck in a global conflict. I wonder if this concept of restoring a battlefield is unique to America, or if this happens in other countries as well. I look forward to where this leads you, I miss you, Kevin!
Yay! Comments! Thanks, folks!
Rebecca: it's funny you use the phrase "where brothers killed brothers" as a negative. Gettysburg regularly uses that phrase as an INCENTIVE for people to come to the battlefields. There's a whole group of people who find that brother vs. brother idea the epitome of romanticism.
Katie: good question! I'm using glass for a few reasons that I hope to elaborate on in a future paper. It's to connect to photographic processes of the time period of the battle, partly, but it also allows me to scratch off the emulsion like I'm doing now to remove images and allow things to show through. You know me - I'm always on the lookout for photo effects that can't be adequately reproduced in Photoshop ;)
Liz: As far as I know, this kind of phenomenon, at least on this kind of scale, is an American one. Melissa Good, one of the students who just graduated, told me that one reason for this is because America has enough room in the landscape to do this. Other countries are either smaller or more heavily populated (or both) and so couldn't afford to preserve a battlefield even if they wanted to. But I think it also has to do with the strange mixture of nostalgia, commercialism, and patriotic sensibilities that are found in America. Jim Weeks writes in his book that Gettysburg has more monuments than any other battlefield on the planet. Why? Partly to mark locations where things happened, but also for the reasons I mentioned above. Right now my question in the art I'm making is, would the landscape around Gettysburg be viewed differently, and would people experience the "history" of the place differently, if the monuments weren't there?
Miss you too!
Miss you too!
Kevin,
You don't know me, I hope you all don't feel like I've invaded your space...I'm a potential student at AIB and Shantel gave me your blog link to learn more about the program. I've enjoyed reading them and learned a lot (sort of less censored...)
Anyway, my reason for invading your conversation is that I looked at the Missing Monument photos and thought you may wish to see the work of Jane Waggoner Deschner. Her work is in someways a long the same vain as what you are exploring.
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