The 25th anniversary of the Civil War Weekend will be held at The Inn at Virginia Tech the weekend of March 18. Kurt Luther, an assistant professor in computer science, will offer tips for solving photographic mysteries. One example he likes to use is an iconic poster used to recruit African American soldiers into the Union Army. Investigations by a series of Civil War historians led to the discovery that the image was based not on the artist’s imagination, as had been assumed for nearly 150 years, but on an actual photo. Further research helped debunk a version of the photo that had been altered to misrepresent the recruits as Confederate soldiers.
Luther’s own contribution was in scrutinizing both biographical details and visual cues – a cap insignia, a set of whiskers, a single row of buttons – to identify the white officer pictured. This finding, he hopes, will help him identify the other soldiers in the photo. “The discovery process is one of the great joys of photo sleuthing,” said Luther, who supplements his more traditional detective work with crowdsourcing techniques and facial recognition software. “It allows us to restore meaning to images and personal histories that would otherwise remain forgotten.”
