Scene of McPherson's Death. Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War, (Annotated)

In Scene of McPherson’s Death. Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War, (Annotated), Kara Walker, an African American artist, depicts a runaway slave wincing in horror at his severed foot, which has been cut off as punishment. Walker superimposes his flat black silhouette (her signature technique appropriated from Victorian era portraits) over a greatly enlarged photolithographic print of a photograph by George N. Barnard. The photograph documents the site near Atlanta where Union General James B. McPherson was killed by Confederate troops. The site is littered with remains of the battle: cannonballs, wagon wheels and a horse’s skeleton. Walker’s Scene of McPherson’s Death fuses her signature cutout with a historical photograph to capture the mayhem of the era.