HARRY TAYLOR PHOTOGRAPHY

Requiem Glasshouse- here lie a small sample of the nearly 300 8x10 inch Ambrotypes and Glass Negatives that form the glasshouse. Please visit my "About" page for a full video explanation of the Wet Plate Collodion process and the opening of The Requiem Glasshouse. Each plate describes an event or personality through the 19th Century pass time of Tableauex Vivants. The theme is life along the Cape Fear River during the War. It was a place of Blockade Runners like Pembroke Jones and John Maffitt, who became the inspiration for Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind". The Underground Railroad passed through and silently ushered many of the enslaved to a new life of freedom, many returned after enlisting in the US Army to liberate Wilmington. There is the Spy, Rose O'Neal Greenhow, who was lost in the river while running the blockade in a dress full of gold coins.

The background is of massive Forts, a lawless port town, Yellow Fever and always the River.

With the fall of Fort Fisher in January 1865, the river was forever closed. Wilmington fell a month later at the Battle of the Forks, due largely to the fighting of the USCT portrayed in the Requiem glasshouse. The following month the war was over.

The Requiem glasshouse is in the permanent collection of the Cameron Art Museum.


The Cameron Art Museum sits on the Forks Battlefield.


Special thank go to all the living historians who with great kindness and passion collaborated with me on this project,

and of course to the Cameron Art Museum, Friends of Fort Fisher and Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Sites.


All images are Copyright Harry Taylor 2019.

A few of the 300 ambrotypes that make up the Tableaux Vivants that tell the story of the Civil War in the Cape Fear region. The the images form the wall of the Glasshouse.The installation is in The Cameron Art Museum's collection,2014.

The Glass house, compiled of 300 ambrotypes.

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