If You Want to Go: History Is, as History Was

Abstract

Gettysburg Magazine, no. 52 secure surface. As I approached to set up my own shot, he looked at me and nodded, noticing the shiny M model Leica hanging from my neck. “Th at’s a beauty,” he off ered, motioning to my camera. “Yours, too,” I said, returning his compliment. “Big stuff you have there . . . a more expensive hobby than mine.” “Just making some test exposures,” he said as he picked up his coat and prepared to leave. And then I looked down and saw the nameplate on the top of his camera box. David Muench, it read. David Muench, the famous landscape photographer from Arizona Highways Magazine and anything else in America worth photographing. Like the line in the old skit with Garth and Wayne from Saturday Night Live, I probably said something like, “I’m not worthy.” I have that much respect for Muench’s work and reputation. He nodded a quiet “thank you” and walked down the hill to a waiting van, where he stowed his equipment, and then drove off . For me, it was a modernday epiphany on the battlefi eld, seeing a master at work on a selected scene, watching how he placed his camera, how he used the available light, and how he made his inspiration work. And in the years since, I’ve thought about that day and relate it to what Alexander Gardner, the great Scottish photographer and protégé of Matthew Brady, must have recognized when he walked up to the scene of the dead sharpshooter above Devil’s Den aft er the battle and saw an opportunity of his own. It is one of those postbattle images from Gettysburg that for generations has become etched in the If you want to see history like those who saw it fi rst, take a good photo reference, learn the facts, and fi nd those same historic scenes today. Your imagination will do the rest.