George N. Barnard, Ruins of the Pinckney Mansion, Charleston, South Carolina, 1866

George N. Barnard, American, 1819–1902: The Ponder House, Atlanta, 1865. Albumen print, 25.5 x 35.8 cm. Museum purchase, David Hunter McAlpin, Class of 1920, Fund (x1975-224). Photo by Bruce M. White.

At the conclusion of the Civil War, George N. Barnard, a former staff photographer for Mathew Brady, retraced General William Tecumseh Sherman’s bloody march through the Carolinas and Georgia. Barnard compiled sixty-one landscape views into a deluxe album that he published in time for the Christmas market in 1866. The house of Ephraim Ponder sheltered Confederate sharpshooters during the siege of Atlanta; its perforated facade testifies to its absorption of countless rounds of Union shellfire.