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
Category: Photo Sleuth
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
Lost and Found in the Library of Congress
By Kurt Luther In January 2020, John Banks posted on his Civil War blog a detailed examination of a glass negative in the Library of Congress (LOC) collection, titled, “Washington,
Why Photo Sleuths Do—and Don’t—Share With the Community
By Kurt Luther In these columns, I frequently emphasize the importance of community in Civil War photo sleuthing. Most of us benefit from the resources freely shared by other members
Evidence-Based Tips for Using Civil War Photo Sleuth
By Kurt Luther Photo sleuthing is, at its core, a process of elimination. We start with a mystery photo whose subject could be any of the three million soldiers who
Second Opinion
By Kurt Luther In my last column, I presented some initial facts and figures showing that Civil War Photo Sleuth (CWPS), our free website for identifying unknown soldiers in photos,
Civil War Photo Sleuth: An Update
By Kurt Luther Last August, we launched Civil War Photo Sleuth (CWPS), a free website that brings together community expertise and face recognition technology to identify unknown Civil War soldier
What to Do When Gold Standards Go Wrong
By Kurt Luther In photo sleuthing, most of us strive to set a high bar for what constitutes sufficiently strong evidence to identify an unknown soldier portrait. The gold standard