Military Bridge, Across the Chickahominy, Virginia (1862): Art, History and Details

Military Bridge, Across the Chickahominy, Virginia (1862) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is David B. Woodbury (American, 1866).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In this complex composition, David B. Woodbury merged the documentation of an event with his desire to record an impressive landscape. The image depicts a precarious, yet essential military log bridge that traverses a swamp created by the accumulated waters of the Chickahominy River, located southeast of Richmond, Virginia. Constructed under difficult physical conditions, the structure was later destroyed by floodwaters caused by heavy rains. The workers involved with the structure's construction are positioned in a single line so that each person is identifiable; however, reduced to diminutive size by the camera's distant viewpoint, the workers appear to be dominated by their natural environment. This image appeared in the first volume of a two-volume set of 100 Civil War photographs published between 1865–66 by Alexander Gardner (1821–1882), who printed the negatives and compiled the album, which included work by a number of other photographers.

Object facts

• Title: Military Bridge, Across the Chickahominy, Virginia
• Date: 1862
• Creator attribution: David B. Woodbury (American, 1866)
• Culture: America
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print, gold toned, from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 17.7 x 23 cm (6 15/16 x 9 1/16 in.); Matted: 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.)
• Collection: PH - American 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1991.283

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.