Anne Strachan Cross | Pennsylvania State University (original) (raw)

Talks by Anne Strachan Cross

Over the course of the American Civil War, Harper’s Weekly illustrated newspaper frequently relie... more Over the course of the American Civil War, Harper’s Weekly illustrated newspaper frequently relied on photographic sources for its illustrated reporting. This included gruesome portraits of human suffering that spoke not only to the horrors of war, but also slavery’s violation of human rights. In these “news pictures” of abused enslaved persons, disabled soldiers, and other abject bodies, the effects of atrocity are painfully rendered by the wood engraving process. For example, in the case of sixteen year-old Martha Ann Banks, a young African American woman abused by her former enslaver, and whose image Harper’s published on July 28, 1866, the engraver would have had to carve into the woodblock in order for her scars to be registered as white highlights against her dark skin. In the context of Harper’s reporting, such images of human suffering are often intended less to illustrate a story of individual experience, than to provide meaningful evidence for the newspaper’s political arguments, and particularly to convince Northern readers that the Confederacy was barbarous and inhumane. In this paper I consider not only the ethics of Harper’s publication of Martha Ann’s image and other images of Civil War atrocity, but also the inherent violence of the wood engraving process itself. How can we consider the hand of the engraver in the representation of scars, missing limbs, and emaciated figures? And how can we, as art historians, analyze such violent images?

On July 28, 1866, Harper’s Weekly newspaper published a gruesome image that was intended to demon... more On July 28, 1866, Harper’s Weekly newspaper published a gruesome image that was intended to demonstrate the cruelty of the former slaveholding Confederacy, and the shocking violence that Black men and women continued to face in Reconstruction. The wood engraved illustration represents a young Black woman seated upon a chair with her dress stripped to her waist. With her back facing the reader, the woman turns to display the marks of abuse that she received at the hands of her former enslaver. Captioned “Marks of Punishment Inflicted Upon a Colored Servant in Richmond, Virginia,” Harper’s textual framing of the image suggests that the woman serves a merely symbolic role by obscuring her identity and locating the subject of the image in the site of her injured body. Echoing the formal composition and circulation of the infamous image of a formerly enslaved man known as both Gordon and Peter – also known as The Scourged Back – the woman’s scarred body is similarly employed as an index of cruelty, oriented in order to characterize the South as barbarous and unworthy of political compromise.

In this paper, I describe my ongoing engagement with the illustration of Martha Ann Banks and the archival violence that has displaced Martha Ann’s personhood from historical memory, while simultaneously confronting the political, ethical, and moral implications of my attempts at historical recovery. Wanting to learn more about the subject of Harper’s illustration, my research has led me to ask questions about what it means to work within an archive of racial subjugation – particularly as a white woman – and both the possibilities and limits of historical narration in recovering the lives of enslaved individuals. Drawing upon the work of scholars such as Saidiya Hartman, Laura Helton, Martha Hodes, Tina Campt, and Molly Rogers, this paper will examine how archivally-informed speculative history – what Hodes terms “leaps of grounded imagination,” or which Hartman has creatively theorized as “critical fabulation” – can allow historians to read against the violence of the archive, and the potentialities of this approach for a re-reading of photographs of racialized violence and the reimagining of Art History more broadly.

On July 28, 1866, Harper’s Weekly illustrated newspaper published an article that sought to alert... more On July 28, 1866, Harper’s Weekly illustrated newspaper published an article that sought to alert its readers to the violence being enacted against African American men and women in the former Confederacy. Entitled, “A Cruel Punishment,” the article featured an illustration of a young African American woman who bore the marks of abuse from her former enslaver. Presented in a three-quarter pose, with her exposed back displaying the evidence of her torture, the illustration of the woman now identified as Martha Ann Banks echoes the composition of the infamous photograph known as “The Scourged Back.” However, unlike Gordon, the male subject of “The Scourged Back,” Martha Ann remains unknown to many scholars. This paper looks closely at the case of Martha Ann Banks and, by sharing her story, will explore the role of the archive in the history of black female subjugation in the immediate post-Emancipation period. Tracing the history of Martha Ann’s image, from medical record, to newspaper illustration, to the work of contemporary artist Emily Carris, this paper also explores how the archive can be activated today.

On June 18, 1864, more than three years after the shots fired on Fort Sumter ignited the American... more On June 18, 1864, more than three years after the shots fired on Fort Sumter ignited the American Civil War, Harper’s Weekly illustrated newspaper published an article that urged its Northern readers of the continued need to cast out “the spirit which inspires the rebellion,” despite growing calls for peace. Entitled “Rebel Cruelty,” the article detailed the inhumanities practiced upon Union soldiers in Confederate prisons, and was accompanied by two wood engraved illustrations depicting emaciated prisoners shortly after their release. While noting that the pictures were “fearful to look upon” and would “make children shudder,” they nonetheless appear on the issue’s very cover, as the author asserts that, “no evidence is like these pictures.” “They are not fancy sketches from descriptions,” the author notes: “They are photographs from life, or rather from death in life, and a thousand-fold more impressively than any description they tell the terrible truth.” The testimonial power of photography is therefore employed as part of the content of Harper’s reporting, oriented in order to characterize the Confederacy as barbarous and inhumane.

Importantly, these engraved illustrations are identified as being made after photographs taken at the United States General Hospital, Division No. 1, in Annapolis, Maryland. Originally created as medical documents, these images were adapted into cartes de visite for wider circulation. Photographs of the emaciated soldiers were then sent to Harper’s Weekly by Dr. Ellerslie Wallace, a Philadelphia-based physician and member of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, who led a federal inquiry into the condition of returned prisoners. These photographic sources were further remediated by Harper’s engravers, their tones and shadows translated into the lines and cross-hatching of a wood block, which is able to be integrated with raised type.

In this project, which is an excerpt of my dissertation, I focus on the images of returned prisoners that were produced at the U.S. General Hospital in Annapolis in 1864, and will consider the remediation of photographic images by Harper’s Weekly as part of a larger material network of the circulation of images of atrocity during the American Civil War. Following the models set forth by scholars such as François Brunet and Thierry Gervais, this project not only emphasizes the material conditions that enabled photographic images to circulate in the press, but also advance the use of circulation as a methodological concept that grounds the emerging construction of “news” in material histories. Invoking the arc of the images’ materiality, from surgeon’s records, to cartes de visite, to their afterlives in albums, manuscripts, and as newspaper illustrations accompanied by text, I argue that this complex material archive should be regarded as evidence not only of the circulation of these images, but also of their evolving reception across larger audiences.

On June 17, 1865, two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Harper’s Weekly publi... more On June 17, 1865, two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Harper’s Weekly published an article warning its readers against an immediate reconciliation with the South. Entitled “Rebel Cruelties,” the article featured illustrations depicting disabled Union soldiers who had lost their feet, in whole or in part, due to conditions in Southern prisons. Bordering the article’s second page, the illustrations reinforce the text by conveying the reality of these atrocities in a way that words cannot. As the author states, they bring to the eye “features of cruelty which could not well be described by the pen.”

These engraved illustrations are identified as “exact facsimiles” of photographs, faithful to their origins as surgical documents adapted into cartes de visite for wider circulation. Further remediated by Harper’s engravers, these images offer an opportunity to examine how the brutality of the Civil War was apprehended and understood within a hierarchy of media. In this paper, I begin to trace the visual history of an aesthetics of atrocity within Harper’s Weekly through the material practices of remediation, and examine how visual and textual information was transformed by this process. Specifically, I will focus on images of disabled soldiers from Andersonville prison as they underwent a necessary process of graphic translation for publication. Invoking the arc of the images’ materiality, I will argue that this material archive should be regarded as evidence of their evolving reception across greater audiences, as a pre-photojournalistic aesthetic of atrocity was integrated into the nineteenth-century American mass press.

On June 17, 1865, two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Harper’s Weekly publi... more On June 17, 1865, two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Harper’s Weekly published an article warning its Northern readers against an immediate reconciliation with the South. Entitled “Rebel Cruelties,” the article featured several illustrations depicting Union soldiers who had lost their feet, in whole or in part, due to conditions in Southern prisons. While noting that for many readers the accounts of the men’s suffering would be “too horrible for decent recital,” the author asserts that these illustrations are important, as they bring “to the eye features of cruelty which could not well be described by the pen.” Bordering the article’s second page, the illustrations reinforce the text by conveying the reality of these atrocities in a way that words cannot.

The article identifies the images as “exact facsimiles” of photographs, a term used to indicate the faithfulness of the wood engraver to the image’s source. In the case of “Rebel Cruelties,” the illustrations originated as photographs taken by a surgeon of the Union Army. Adapted into cartes de visite for wider circulation, the images were then further remediated by Harper’s engravers, their tones and shadows translated into the lines and cross-hatching of the wood block. Occupying the positions of both photography and wood engraving, the publication of these remediated images offers an opportunity to examine how the brutality of the Civil War was apprehended and understood within a hierarchy of media.

In this paper I trace the visual history of an aesthetics of atrocity within Harper’s Weekly through the material practices of remediation, and examine how the conveyance of information was transformed by this process. Specifically I focus on images of disabled soldiers from the notorious Andersonville prison as they underwent a process of graphic translation necessary for publication. Invoking the arc of the images’ materiality, from surgeon’s records, to cartes de visite, to newspaper illustrations accompanied by text, I will argue that this material archive should be regarded as evidence of their evolving reception across greater audiences, as a photographic aesthetic of atrocity was integrated into the nineteenth-century American mass press.

These engraved illustrations are identified as “exact facsimiles” of photographs, faithful to their origins as surgical documents adapted into cartes de visite for wider circulation. Further remediated by Harper’s engravers, these images offer an opportunity to examine how the brutality of the Civil War was apprehended and understood within a hierarchy of media. In this paper, I begin to trace the visual history of an aesthetics of atrocity within Harper’s Weekly through the material practices of remediation, and examine how visual and textual information was transformed by this process. Specifically, I focus on images of disabled soldiers from Andersonville prison as they underwent a necessary process of graphic translation for publication.

In May 1919, three men were arrested for “smearing” red, black, and yellow paint – the colors of ... more In May 1919, three men were arrested for “smearing” red, black, and yellow paint – the colors of the German flag – on a monument honoring Confederate Captain Henry Wirz in Andersonville, GA. This misguided act (misguided because Wirz was Swiss, not German), was no doubt motivated by recent editorials that equated Wirz with the German army in World War I. Wirz, the commander of the Confederate prison at Andersonville, had been tried and executed for crimes committed during the Civil War, and served as a symbol of Confederate barbarity for many Northerners. From 1916 to 1919, authors in both the U.S. and Europe cited the case of the German-speaking Wirz as precedent for the punishment due the German leaders. No matter the motivation, however, Southerners took offense at the desecration of the memory of a man they considered to be a hero-martyr of the Confederacy.

Erected in 1909, the obelisk served as an attempt to reclaim Wirz’s memory and demonstrates the role that public monuments played in the construction of identity in the former Confederacy. This paper presents the first art historical reading of the monument and will draw on the South’s use of the Egyptian Revival style to memorialize itself within revolutionary ideals. Invoking also first-person accounts of Wirz’s trial, anti-German sentiment around WWI, and the materiality of the monument’s defacement, I argue that the strike on the monument was seen as a strike against the South and their attempts to rewrite their history within the rhetoric of the Lost Cause.

Among the many photographs produced by Timothy O’Sullivan for the Geological Exploration of the F... more Among the many photographs produced by Timothy O’Sullivan for the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel are several images that present a less comforting picture of man’s encounter with the landscape and where the body appears under threat. This group of images, which were excluded from the survey’s official reports, includes photographs in which men are cut off by the frame, obscured by steam, or appear merely as detached limbs or incorporeal shadows. Many art historians have noted the strange quality of these photographs. Indeed, Joel Snyder and François Brunet have variously referred to them as “chilling, discomforting, weird,” and even “burlesque,” in what Brunet sees as their strange humor.
However, missing from the discourse surrounding O’Sullivan’s photographs is a thoughtful examination of how the body is constituted in O’Sullivan’s western landscapes, and the greater ideological implications of these “chilling, discomforting, [and] weird” figures. Indeed, scholars have failed to address what the alteration or exclusion of these images from the official reports reveals not only about the efforts of Clarence King, the survey’s leader, to control the official narrative, but also about the symbolic work that these figures do. This paper will closely study the instances of abnormal figures within the western landscapes of Timothy O’Sullivan’s photographs for the Fortieth Parallel Survey and demonstrate how they function apart from the aesthetic narrative of an Edenic West that Clarence King endeavored to present. Drawing on the photographs, their use in albums prepared for public and private consumption, and the network of historical, representational, and cultural issues with which they engage, I will argue that these images were suppressed because they threatened the popular and political understanding of the American West as the answer to the fractured and upended condition of the nation after the Civil War.

Publications by Anne Strachan Cross

History of Photography, 2021

This article explores the circulation of photographs of prisoners of war that were taken at the U... more This article explores the circulation of photographs of prisoners of war that were taken at the US General Hospital in Annapolis, Maryland in 1864. More specifically, it considers the publication of these images as wood engravings in Harper’s Weekly’s illustrated newspaper as part of a broader network of photographic circulation, and the circulation of images of atrocity during the American Civil War. This project follows recent interventions in photographic history that have emphasised reproduction and circulation, and that have decentred the photographic print as the primary site for the production of meaning. By examining the multiple visual and narrative contexts in which photographs of the Annapolis prisoners appeared, including as wood engravings in Harper’s Weekly, this article reveals how divergent meanings were ascribed to the images, as both the press and the public sought to make sense of the prisoners’ deterioration and to use their images for political purposes. Ultimately, the article employs circulation as a methodology to understand how audiences used photographs to make sense of the seemingly ineffable trauma and devastation of the American Civil War. This project also demonstrates how Harper’s Weekly relied upon an existing public archive – of text and images, particularly cartes de visite – to report the news and to further its rhetorical position. It is important to highlight that the images in this article are disturbing. They show men in states of significant emaciation and were presumably taken without full consent. These pictures are shown as part of an effort to understand the ways in which images of atrocity were circulated in the nineteenth century, and, as such, requires that we consider the appropriateness of publishing and exhibiting such images both then and now. A question of care and of an ethics of looking must be at the forefront of this critical engagement.

Panorama, 2020

This article describes my encounter with a portrait of Martha Ann Banks, a young African American... more This article describes my encounter with a portrait of Martha Ann Banks, a young African American woman abused by her former enslaver, at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. In the image that is on display, Banks is shown seated upon a chair with her dress stripped to her waist as she turns to display her scarred back—a testimony to the brutality of her enslaved past and an echo of the infamous image known as The Scourged Back. From my ongoing engagement with the image of Banks’s injured body, I offer insights into her life and the production of her image. I also explore how Banks’s image was circulated and framed through its use, both as a photograph and as a wood engraving in Harper’s Weekly. By examining the various forms of Banks’s image, this discussion reveals the layers of mediation—both material and human—that that have delimited the historic narration of her abuse. In addition, this article engages with questions about working within an archive of racial subjugation; the political and moral implications of attempting to recover the lives of the enslaved; and the ethics of circulating and studying images of racialized violence.

Expanding the Audience for Art in the 19th Century at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts , 2016

Scholarly Programming by Anne Strachan Cross

In the fall of 2019, the University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press will present an exhibi... more In the fall of 2019, the University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press will present
an exhibition of work by the African American artist Elizabeth Catlett (1915 – 2012).
Drawn primarily from the collection of artist, scholar, and collector Samella Lewis, this
exhibition will display prints and sculpture by Catlett in conversation with work by Lewis
and by Catlett’s husband, Francisco Mora. In conjunction with this exhibition, the
University of Delaware is pleased to announce a one-day symposium that explores the
transnational perspectives of Catlett’s work, to be held on October 4, 2019.

On June 17, 1865, two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Harper’s Weekly publi... more On June 17, 1865, two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Harper’s Weekly published an article warning its Northern readers against an immediate reconciliation with the South. Entitled “Rebel Cruelties,” the article featured several illustrations depicting Union soldiers who had lost their feet, in whole or in part, due to conditions in Southern prisons. While noting that for many readers the accounts of the men’s suffering would be “too horrible for decent recital,” the author asserts that these illustrations are important, as they bring “to the eye features of cruelty which could not well be described by the pen.” Bordering the article’s second page, the illustrations reinforce the text by conveying the reality of these atrocities in a way that words cannot.

These engraved illustrations are identified as “exact facsimiles” of photographs, faithful to their origins as surgical documents adapted into cartes de visite for wider circulation. Further remediated by Harper’s engravers, these images offer an opportunity to examine how the brutality of the Civil War was apprehended and understood within a hierarchy of media. In this paper, I begin to trace the visual history of an aesthetics of atrocity within Harper’s Weekly through the material practices of remediation, and examine how visual and textual information was transformed by this process. Specifically, I focus on images of disabled soldiers from Andersonville prison as they underwent a necessary process of graphic translation for publication.

History of Photography, 2021

Panorama, 2020

Expanding the Audience for Art in the 19th Century at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts , 2016