[Bayonet Drill] 1861 - 1865

Curator: So, let's talk about this photograph, "[Bayonet Drill]," created sometime between 1861 and 1865. The artist? Egbert Guy Fowx. It’s a gelatin-silver print, currently housed here at the Metropolitan Museum. Editor: My first thought? Melancholy. It’s this ghostly, distant image—all those men in formation under a vast sky. It speaks volumes about discipline, duty, and the dehumanizing effects of war, even without seeing individual faces clearly. Curator: Precisely. There’s this striking formalism—the repetition of the figures, the linear precision—contrasted with the haziness of the background. Notice how Fowx frames the scene within an oval, almost as if peering through a looking glass into the past. Semiotically, the arrangement speaks to order, control, the mass mobilization, the idea of sacrificing the self for the cause. Editor: The "cause," always such a slippery slope, isn't it? I imagine standing there, boots muddy, heart heavy, another anonymous face in the crowd. And it makes you wonder, who are they really fighting for? And what are they hoping for? Besides, you know, to stay alive. Curator: I think there’s an undeniable tension here, and a great contrast to the grandiosity often associated with images of warfare. Fowx presents it instead with an understated quietness, a somber beauty. Editor: "Somber beauty," that's a good way to put it. But maybe also with a good dollop of terrifying alienation? All lined up like that? Each a cog in some awful machine? A machine pointed, invariably, at other humans? It really does haunt me, I tell you. Curator: This image truly challenges the romantic notions of warfare, showing, through its very composition and materiality, the humanity caught in the cogs of its gears. A very profound statement given the photographic practices of the Civil War Era. Editor: Yes, well, sometimes it takes a quiet photograph to scream the loudest.