<p>In 1855 Baron James de Rothschild, principle investor in the French rail line Chemin de Fer du Nord, commissioned Baldus to make prints for a souvenir album documenting Queen Victoria’s historic trip through northern France.</p>
<p>The trip, which began at Boulogne-sur-Mer on the English Channel and ended in Paris, signified the newfound economic cooperation and personal friendship between the queen and the French emperor Napoléon III. It also gave France the opportunity to show off the country’s modern railroads to its trading partner. Baldus’s album included fifty views of railway stations, cathedrals, and other historic sites along the queen’s route, all bound in a sumptuous leather book with maps and a hand-painted title page.</p>
<p>Queen Victoria and Prince Philip, who were photography enthusiasts, were familiar with Baldus’s work before he made the album. He had established his reputation making photographic surveys of France’s architectural heritage for the Missions Héliographiques, a government program designed to document ancient monuments for future preservation.</p>
<p>During the Civil War, George Barnard was named official photographer for General Sherman’s command. He accompanied the general and his troops through the South on the infamous March to the Sea campaign. As Sherman entered Atlanta in September 1864, the Confederate Army, under General John B. Hood, abandoned the city. Before they left, however, they set fire to 81 railroad cars bearing munitions so they would not fall into the hands of the enemy.</p>
<p>Like many of the photographs Barnard published after the war in <em>The Sherman Campaign</em> (1866), this image documents the apocalyptic aftermath rather than the event itself. A ghostly figure walks amid the rubble, where the train’s wheels, the only thing that survived the conflagration, are lined up like giant barbells. Barnard used another negative to add an incongruously spectacular cloudscape above the desolate wreckage, heightening the otherworldly appearance of the scene.</p>