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Teach PA History
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Is Seeing Believing?
Further Reading

Frassanito, William A. Gettysburg: A Journey in Time. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1996.

This lesson relies heavily on and uses Frassanito's skilled detective and scholarly work. This publication offers more examples of his photograph analysis bringing to light the realities of Civil War photography. Approximately 100 photographs are arranged into six groups by geographical location.

Web Sites

Basic Strategies in Reading Photographs http://nuovo.com/southern-images/analyses.html

This site provides an in-depth explanation of how to "read" a photograph.

Gibson's Photographic Gallery http://www.civilwarphotography.com/gibson/wetplate.html

This explains the step-by-step process of preparing "wet plate" photographs. A private photographer who replicates Civil War methods for taking photographs maintains the site.

Photographic Images of the American Civil War http://www.swcivilwar.com/cw_photos.html

This site gives a succinct overview of the impact and state of photography during the Civil War. It divides its photographs into seven categories: Federal Leaders, Confederate Leaders, Battlefield Post Mortems, Fortifications and Works, Civic Destruction, The Common Soldier, and The Anderson Cavalry

Selected Civil War Photos (American Memory, Library of Congress) http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwphome.html

This incredible collection, a part of American Memory at the Library of Congress, holds over one-thousand Civil War photographs. The site offers a time line and other links (i.e., Taking Photographs during the Civil War) to better understand the photographs presented. The photographs students studied in this lesson were taken from this repository. In addition, the section called "Does the Camera Ever Lie" was adapted for the classroom

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