A
recent visit to the civil war battlefield
at Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania has me thinking about
the way landscapes are able to contain
memory,
how they are able to preserve and convey
past events. The idea of preserving
the battlefield as a memorial to the
fallen
soldiers is an appropriate one. But
does the landscape itself tell
us anything about
those distant events?
|
As
a photographer I am interested in how
visual signs convey meaning, in this
case how the landscape and objects in
the landscape
can tell the story of the battle.
If I were to rely on visual clues alone,
would I be able to get a sense of the
events that occurred at Gettysburg?
On my first visit I came cold, no research, no reading about the battle beforehand,
I just arrived and started driving around taking photographs. I was able to
understand the site on one level, the present landscape. But I didn’t understand
the significance of the landmarks and topography. Prior to my second visit I
read up on the war, and the Gettysburg battle in particular, so that the landmarks
were familiar, names recalled events, places had meaning beyond their physical
appearance. |
I
found that the landscape itself does
not convey much about the battle. The
trees, even the oldest oak trees, were
saplings when the battle occurred 147
years ago. There is little to differentiate
this group of fields from many other
farm fields in Pennsylvania, aside
from the hundreds of monuments that
have been
added to
the battlefield. I kept looking for
a reference point on the battlefield
which
would connect me to the event, some
physical evidence that a battle had
occurred here.
There are no earth works from the battle,
there are no bunkers, no shell craters,
no bullet holes to give a direct visual
link to the battle. The only direct
sign I saw was a canon ball hole in
Trostle's
barn, a site of terrible fighting on
the second day of the battle.
The topography has not changed much since the battle, some of the stone walls
are still there, and key points in the battle occurred near significant landmarks,
like the round tops, the angle, devil's den, the wheat fields, peach orchards,
and
a few of the houses and barns that existed during the battle.
|
What
becomes obvious is that a narrative
about the battle is necessary, that the
landscape itself is fairly mute about
the battle until you understand the story.
People who are visiting are telling each
other the stories about what happened
at important landmarks. It becomes a
landscape
upon
which stories are projected. The battlefield
is largely empty, a void, a beautiful
landscape of fence lines,
wheat fields, wooded areas, and rocky
outcrops. It is a blank slate on which
to imagine the events of the
battle. It is a
landscape that is scrutinized and puzzled
over, observed from a hundred points
around
its circumference but rarely entered.
Gettysburg is an important place
to visit. But spend
time at the visitors center watching
the introduction
film and seeing
the cyclorama before visiting the battlefield. Then the landmarks
will become familiar, and the landscape will
release
the terrible memories that lie just below the surface. |
|
