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War Memoranda Photography, Walt Whitman, and Renewal Binh Danh & Robert SchulC
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“The real war will never get in the books.” !
“The dead, beloved, continue to speak in the leaves.”
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from “Stricken” by Molly Rogers !
for War Memoranda: Photography, Walt Whitman, and Renewal by Binh Danh & Robert Schultz !
“The dead, beloved, con:nue to speak in the leaves.” These words from Robert Schultz’s poem “Ge?ysburg” lay bare the project of War Memoranda. Working with portraits of Civil War and Vietnam War soldiers, the warJme wriJngs of Walt Whitman, and with objects, both found and made, acquired on trips to southern ba?legrounds, the poet Schultz and photographer Binh Danh have reconfigured the documents of war to create a new kind of memorial, one that speaks of war as personal tragedy. War memorials are too oMen mute, naming the dead with fiNng solemnity but neglecJng to say anything of what the dead know. The cenotaph, the column, the mounted soldier—such monuments stand for the soldierly virtues of courage and sacrifice but say li?le of how courage differs between men and what exactly each has sacrificed. Perhaps of all our naJonal monuments, only the Vietnam Veterans Memorial gives the civilian a shiver of understanding. “We wade on in,” Schultz writes of the Memorial, as if we were not on the Mall in Washington but in the swamps of Southeast Asia, a place where, faced with Maya Lin’s austere granite gash, “parJcular deaths rush out.” It is impossible not to feel in some small but significant way involved. So it is with War Memoranda. ExhibiJon Overview War Memoranda probes the quesJon, “How do Americans remember war?” with soldiers’ portraits developed in the flesh of leaves, ba?lefield landscapes photographed using nineteenth-­‐century technologies, and war poems of inJmate reflecJon. !
“The real war will never get in the !
books,” Whitman declared, ciJng the “interior history” of “the actual soldier of 1862-­‐’65, North and South, with all his ways.” Taking on this challenge, photographer Binh Danh and author Robert Schultz have drawn upon Whitman’s poetry and prose and upon the Liljenquist Family CollecJon of Civil War portraits held in the Library of Congress. And, in a final turn, the collaborators present memorials to their own wars—
in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—applying nineteenth-­‐century techniques and media. Merging past and present, War Memoranda evokes the secret, “interior history” of war. !
JuxtaposiJons make meaning in War Memoranda. To evoke Jmeless dimensions of war, portraits of Civil War and Vietnam War soldiers alike are developed in leaves, and memorials to Afghanistan and Civil War dead both are rendered in Daguerreotype photographs. Similarly, cyanotype prints of the AnJetam ba?lefield are echoed in inJmate cyanotypes portraits of living young people, their eyes closed in memory and reflecJon. In a wall text quoJng “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” Whitman addresses us—“I am with you, you men and women of a generaJon, or ever so many generaJons hence”—and War Memoranda looks back at him in answering contemporary artworks and poems. Even portraits of Whitman himself are rendered in leaves plucked from his own Camden House garden, just as portraits of young Civil War soldiers are rendered in leaves from ba?lefield “witness trees” that stood in the 1860s. !
The War Memoranda project seizes upon a remarkable coincidence: As the U.S. Civil War Sesquicentennial observaJons close, the naJon begins to mark the 50th anniversary of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. At the same Jme, 2015 is the 150th anniversary of Whitman’s volume of war poetry, Drum Taps, and the 160th anniversary of his landmark first ediJon Leaves of Grass. !
Whitman, in his poem “ This Compost,” wonders at the purifying power of the earth that takes in death and sends back life, as when “[t]he resurrecJon of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves.” Correspondingly, the leaves that hold the soldiers’ images in War Memoranda have grown out of contemporary American soil and fulfill Whitman’s predicJon that the war dead will inhabit “every future grain of wheat and ear of corn.” Pursuing inJmate history, War Memoranda contemplates American wars and choreographs moments of encounter with our naJonal past and the people who lived it. The ArJsts
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War Memoranda grows out of a n o n g o i n g s e v e n -­‐ y e a r collaboraJon between Binh Danh and Robert Schultz which has seen artworks and poems published side by side in naJonal l i t e r a r y j o u r n a l s a n d o n Scribners’ BEST AMERICAN POETRY website. !
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Binh Danh Binh Danh received his MFA from Stanford University and has emerged as an arJst of naJonal importance with work that invesJgates his Vietnamese heritage and our collecJve memory of war, both in Vietnam and Cambodia—work that, in his own words, deals with “mortality, memory, history, landscape, jusJce, evidence, and spirituality.” He developed a process for making “chlorophyll prints,” by which photographic images are embedded in the flesh of leaves, and his newest body of work focuses on the daguerreotype process. His works have been included in important exhibiJons at museums across the country and internaJonally, and are held in the collecJons of the NaJonal Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Art Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the deYoung Museum, the George Eastman House, and many more. In 2013 he was a featured arJst at the 18th Biennale of Sydney Biennale in Australia. He is professor of photography at Arizona State University and is represented by the Haines Gallery in San Francisco and the Lisa Se?e Gallery in Sco?sdale, Arizona. !
Robert Schultz Robert Schultz is the author of four books and has received a NaJonal Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Cornell University’s Corson Bishop Poetry Prize, and, from The Virginia Quarterly Review, the Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry. Poems included in War Memoranda have appeared in naJonal literary journals, in anthologies, and in textbooks published by Random House and McGraw Hill. His books include two collecJons of poetry, Vein Along the Fault and Winter in Eden, a novel, The Madhouse Nudes, and a work of nonficJon, We Were Pirates: A Torpedoman’s Pacific War. He holds MFA and PhD degrees from Cornell University and has taught at Cornell, the University of Virginia, and Luther College. Since 2004 has been the John P. Fishwick Professor of English at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. He is represented by Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents in New York. !
Tour Facts !
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Availability !
Contents 8 to 12 week presentaJons, November 2016 – November 2018 Approximately 50 chlorophyll prints, 15 cyanotypes, 35 daguerreotypes, 8 poetry broadsides and arJst's books. Also included are electronic files of educaJonal materials, labels, wall texts, and gallery guide. !
Gallery Space 176 linear wall M., 2,500 square M., subject to layout !
ParJcipaJon Fee $13,500
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Shipping & Insurance Taubman Museum to make craJng and shipping arrangements. ExhibiJng venue pays pro-­‐rated one-­‐way shipping costs and insurance fee. !
SupporJng Materials !
50 guides and video Companion Book The Library of Congress Publishing Office currently is working with the arJsts to produce a large-­‐
format companion volume, War Memoranda, that will include full-­‐color art reproducJons, arJst’s statements, an introducJon by Whitman scholar Ed Folsom, and original essays by poets and scholars Barbara Bair, Magdelyn Helwig, David Lehman, Stanley Plumly, and Molly Rogers. Five copies will be provided, with the opJon to acquire addiJonal copies at 40% discount.
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Contact !
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Amy G. Moorefield, Deputy Director of ExhibiJons amoorefi[email protected] 540.204.4103 110 Salem Avenue SE, Roanoke, VA 24011 540.342.5760 -­‐ www.taubmanmuseum.org Selected Works !
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Binh Danh & Robert Schultz UnidenKfied young Union soldier in forage cap, 2012 Chlorophyll print and resin 14.5 x 11.5 inches Image from the Liljenquist Family CollecJon, Library of Congress
Binh Danh & Robert Schultz UnidenKfied Confederate soldier in AppomaMox oak leaf, 2012 Chlorophyll print and resin 14.5 x 11.5 x 1.25 inches Image from the Liljenquist Family CollecJon, Library of Congress
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Binh Danh & Robert Schultz Walt Whitman in Camden House hosta leaf, 2011 Chlorophyll print & resin 14.5 x 11.5 inches
Daguerreotype by unknown photographer, probably Gabrielle Harrison, 1854, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden FoundaJons, Rare Books Division
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Binh Danh from Song of Ourselves—leM: Song of Ourselves #2 (top) and #1 (bo?om); right: Leaves of Grass #3 (top) and #5 (unique photograms) Binh Danh & Robert Schultz Daguerreotypes UnidenJfied Union soldier, 2013 !
Binh Danh & Robert Schultz UnidenKfied Union soldier in catalpa “witness tree” leaf, Chatham Manor, Falmouth, Virginia, 2013 Chlorophyll print and resin 14.5 x 11.5 inches Image from the Liljenquist Family CollecJon, Library of Congress
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Binh Danh “Amulet,” poem by Robert Schultz, 2010 Daguerreotype 15.75 x 12.5 inches
Binh Danh & Robert Schultz Girl in mourning, with photograph, 2012 Chlorophyll print and resin 19.5 x 16 inches Image from the Liljenquist Family CollecJon, Library of Congress Binh Danh Whitman’s students (clockwise from top leM) Hannah Cline, Emily Johnson, Alex Walker-­‐Drennan, Michael Loughin, Lauren Davis, Beth Croshaw, 2011 Cyanotypes (six from a series of nine) 13.5 x 11.5 inches each
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Selected Works credits for pages 1-­‐3 Binh Danh & Robert Schultz UnidenKfied woman in mourning with photograph, 2012 Chlorophyll print & resin 16.5 x 13 inches Image from Liljenquist Family CollecJon, Library of Congress !
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Binh Danh Gary McCollough, 20 years old, 2008 Chlorophyll print on grass & resin 18.5 x 15.5 inches Image from “One Week’s Dead,” Life Magazine, 1969 !
Binh Danh & Robert Schultz Cracked Heart, 2012 Chlorophyll print & resin 23.5 x 19.5 inches Image from the Liljenquist Family CollecJon, Library of Congress
Binh Danh James Troy Ralph, 21 years old, 2008 Chlorophyll print on grass & resin 18.5 x 15.5 inches Image from “One Week’s Dead,” Life Magazine, 1969 Binh Danh & Robert Schultz Walt Whitman, 1887, in Camden House hosta leaf, 2011 Chlorophyll print and resin 14.5 x 11.5 x 1.25 inch Binh Danh Harold James Warmsley, 24 years old, 2008 Chlorophyll print on grass & resin 18.5 x 15.5 inches Image from “One Week’s Dead,” Life Magazine, 1969 Binh Danh In memory of our troops: 6371 Dec 25, 2011 Original “camera exposed” Daguerreotype 12.25 x 14 x 1.5 inches
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Binh Danh & Robert Schultz UnidenKfied African-­‐ American soldier with daughter (detail of original), 2013 Chlorophyll print and resin 14.5 x 11.5 inches Image from Liljenquist Family CollecJon, Library Of Congress Binh Danh CPL Sean Langevin, May 20, 2012 Original camera-­‐exposed daguerreotype, 2012 14.25 x 12 inches framed Binh Danh & Robert Schultz Walt Whitman, warJme, 2013 Chlorophyll print & resin 14.5 x 11.5 inches Photograph by Ma?hew Brady or Alexander Gardner, 1861-­‐ 1863 !
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Binh Danh The Copse of Trees, GeMysburg, Pennsylvania, 2011 Cyanotype 17.5 x 25 inches framed Binh Danh AnKetam, Sharpsburg, Maryland, 2011 Cyanotype 17.5 x 25 inches framed !
Binh Danh Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Salem, Virginia, 2011 Cyanotype 12 x 20 inches
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110 Salem Avenue SE Roanoke, VA 24011 540.342.5760 www.taubmanmuseum.org