Researching a Grouping of USCT Officer Photos
By Kurt Luther In previous columns, we have typically focused on identifying a single photo of a soldier or a small group. What approach can we take when researching an
Category: Photo Sleuth
A New Way to Remember a Civil War Veteran Who Lost His Life Trying to Save History
By Kurt Luther In 2020, the Smithsonian Institution released nearly three million digital images of its collections for the public to download freely and view online. These included more than
Making Civil War Photo Sleuth Identifications More Trustworthy
By Kurt Luther Since we launched the Civil War Photo Sleuth (CWPS) website in 2018, more than 33,000 identified Civil War photos have been added. About 20,000 of these photos
Reidentifying a Pennsylvania Cavalry Company
By Kurt Luther Photo sleuthing is not always a blank slate. While many Civil War photos come to us unidentified, others bring names and stories with varying amounts of evidence
Civil War Photo Sleuth Goes Social
By Kurt Luther One of the most remarkable attributes of the Civil War photo sleuthing community is the willingness of its members to help one another. In a previous column
Hampton’s Battery at Gettysburg and Puerto Rico
By Kurt Luther In April of this year, the Facebook page “Civil War Pittsburgh,” managed by public historian Rich Condon, posted an intriguing photo of a group of Civil War
Investigating the Iconic Portraits of a USCT Drummer Boy
By Kurt Luther The pair of portraits of an African American young man—one version in tattered clothes and another in the uniform of a Union drummer boy—is among the most
Identifying an Officer Pictured in a Library of Congress Negative
By Kurt Luther In my first “Photo Sleuth” column in 2015, I wrote about the power of combining perseverance and luck. After years of fruitless searching for photos of my
The Art of Photo Sleuthing
By Kurt Luther Photography was the dominant form of professional portraiture during the Civil War. Its ubiquity owed in part to its high fidelity and low cost. However, other forms
How to Trust the Worthiness of an Identification
By Kurt Luther What makes a Civil War photo identification truly airtight? If a soldier portrait is unidentified, we often consider the gold standard as locating an identical (or very