The following is a guest post by Paloma Ronis von Helms, Prints & Photographs Division Stanford in Government Liljenquist Fellow.
As this year’s Summer Liljenquist Fellow in the Prints & Photographs Division at the Library of Congress, I reviewed ambrotype and tintype images, carte de visite photographs, lithographs, and other formats depicting soldiers and battlefield scenes of the Civil War. I became interested in why these images were taken—what meanings did they have for their owners? For example, images of soldiers were taken to comfort families who might never see their loved ones again. In other cases, individuals sought to collect cheap, widely-produced imag