Men Like Us -- 'Plates of Shining Glass'

Portraits from the American Civil War (1861-65)
Many are photos taken from glass plate negatives of conscripts, most of whom would never have been photographed before -- hence the somewhat startled look as the flash is reflected in their eyes.
I got the idea for this album from a passage in Joseph O'Connor's stunning book, 'Redemption Falls'. A young woman, Eliza Mooney, homeless and bereft, treks through the ravaged post-war landscape seeking her lost younger brother, and comes upon this scene:

‘Glintings in the distance. What can they be? Are stars raining down on the land like frogs? As she nears to the flickers, she sees what is happening. A sight she must be imagining. Carters heft sheets of glass from a wagon, roughly, hurriedly: the odd pane falls and breaks. The overseer shrieks that they are not to be broken, they cost the Master a dollar a dozen. They are passed hand to hand along a chain of men, who are spackling them into the ribs of a greenhouse. She stops. She watches. Plates of shining glass. And each bears the face of a soldier.
They must be the ones who did not come back, who never returned to pay the photographer. Farmers. Husbands. Old men. Boys. The sun burns hard through their reticent smiles. In a year they will all be burned away.'

An image seared into my imagination...what more poignant image of mortality could you conceive??

I post these images here because it is a record of real men --even boys-- unsmiling, apprehensive, weakly proud, awaiting the unknown. Also, as an antidote to the bland, manicured faces of the desirable male increasingly offered up here and elsewhere by AI.