By Adam Ochs Fleischer Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the world in myriad ways, from revolutionizing industries and transforming business operations, to enabling apps like TikTok to cleverly recommend exactly
By Adam Ochs Fleischer The backdrop highlighted in this installment is the only example I have cataloged thus far featuring subjects from a single regiment: the 23rd Pennsylvania Infantry, also
By Adam Ochs Fleischer A central theme of this column since its inception is that backdrops used in Civil War images generally suggest the photographer’s location. It can be fairly
By Adam Ochs Fleischer In this installment, we move to the Western Theater of the war to examine a backdrop used at Camp Hendershott in Davenport, Iowa, and likely in
By Adam Ochs Fleischer In this installment, we examine a painted backdrop that does not have a military theme. Before the Civil War, landscape painting as a genre dominated American
By Adam Ochs Fleischer With this issue marking the second anniversary of this column, it seems fitting to stop and assess what’s been accomplished so far, as well as to
By Adam Ochs Fleischer In this installment, we stay in the Wolverine state to study an example used in Jackson by photographer Norman Erastus Allen. Like Kalamazoo, the city of
By Adam Ochs Fleischer In the previous installment, I focused on a backdrop used in Lexington, Mo., during a storm of sectarian conflict. Identifying the backdrop to photographer Thomas D.
By Adam Ochs Fletcher I have sometimes found that knowing quite a lot about a backdrop is not all that helpful in better acquainting me with the subjects who stood
By Adam Ochs Fleischer White neoclassical buildings boasting large columns at their entrance typify antebellum architecture, from government buildings to plantation homes. As such, it is unsurprising that this imagery
