Timothy O'Sullivan, Fugitive African Americans Fording the Rappahannock River, Rappahannock, Virginia, August 1862.

(Copyprint, Prints and Photographs Division, Reproduction Number: LC-B8171-518 4-4)

This image was taken prior to Emancipation during the second battle of Bull Run (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Bull_Run). The subjects seek freedom behind Union lines.

I don’t know how to view this picture. The composition looks rushed.  I can’t see the faces of the people.  The people in the background and the individual foreground left look away from the cart, back, at what?  And the cart seems about to collapse under its load.

O'Sullivan was a braggart and apparently spoke with an Irish brogue. One of his cameras was blown up by Confederate shells during the battle. What kind of emotion did the lens mediate? How did the observer and observed exchange regards?

How to view this photo, except very painfully, in light of the great tragedy, Reconstruction, that awaits the hopeful?

More American themes.

(Source: memory.loc.gov)