© 2011 WILLIE ANNE WRIGHT
The ghosts of the Civil War are always present in the South — stand in the shade of the stone rifleman in any southern square, and they crowd up close, hoping you'll wonder their names.
Native Virginian Willie Anne Wright does more than that: she catches them on film. Armed with pinhole cameras of her own design, she followed Civil War re-enactors to many of the most famous battlefields from Manassas to Gettysburg.
"In over a decade of photographing Civil War re-enactors, I saw thousands of people, men and women, Caucasian and African American, expend untold hours and energy in a quest to understand and honor a segment of our shared history," says Wright. "Witnessing this deep desire confirmed my feeling that the past is not some forgotten dimension, but is always with us, affecting our lives in ways we may not comprehend."
Re-enactors say that they experience a kind of time travel. Those who experience Wright's Civil War Redux do, too. Using the antique process of camera obscura, Wright lets the sun flood through a tiny aperture onto film, allowing "the past to inscribe itself onto the present day."
The past, as ever, plays a few tricks, from Custer leaning against a pick-up with U.S. Army plates to Robert E. Lee standing next to his own memorial on Monument Avenue in Richmond. But be warned: you might choke on that chuckle when the widows at Manassas turn your way, or the bucket of feet by the hospital tent looms into view.
© 2011 WILLIE ANNE WRIGHT
All of Wright's work with the lensless camera speaks of a world long gone, from the graves and abandoned houses in Southland to the antique clothing in Left Behind, to the returning shades in Civil War Redux.
"I'm hung up on loss and change," she says with a smile, convinced that the past is always with us, even if we can't see it. That's where the pinhole camera comes in. "It sees things I don't."
Although she began her life in art as a painter, Wright turned to lensless photography in the '70s. She is "one of the first artists to revitalize pinhole photography in modern times," says author and consultant for photography at the Chrysler Museum, Brooks Johnson. To this day, she remains one of its most respected and dedicated faithful.
To commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, Civil War Redux has been on the march both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line. In 2011, selections from the series were shown in group shows at the George Eastman House in Rochester and the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk. Solo show venues were the Morris Museum in Augusta, Georgia and the VMFA in Richmond, which will travel the show statewide through 2013.
