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About MI

Overview

Military Images is America’s only magazine dedicated solely to the study of Civil War photography, and our ongoing mission is to showcase, interpret and preserve these rare images. The soldiers, sailors, and others who posed for their likenesses were part of the first generation to grow up with photography, a medium that profoundly impacted our culture in ways large and small. Some photographs were personal and intended for family and intimate friends, and many, many others were mass-produced and shared in albums—the social media of the 1860s. Beginning with the centennial of the Civil War, these relics moved from attics and basements into private and public collections. They continue to fascinate Americans today. In each quarterly issue of MI, readers find a mix of analysis, case studies, examinations of material culture and personal stories that offer a unique perspective on the human aspect of the Civil War. Established in 1979, Military Images is available in print and digital.

Our motto

Learn more about each of the three words that define our passion for Civil War albumen prints, ambrotypes, cartes de visite, daguerreotypes and tintypes, in these musings from the Editor’s Desk:

Inside each issue

Military Images is published quarterly. The print edition is 80 pages in full color. The digital edition includes a downloadable print replica available as a PDF and a web version. What you’ll find inside each issue:

  • 4-6 features stories.
  • Editor’s Desk: Commentary from the Editor and Publisher.
  • Mail Call: Feedback from subscribers.
  • Sutler’s Row: A guide to our advertisers.
  • Military Anthropologist: Data visualizations of Civil War-related statistics.
  • Passing in Review: Reviews of books and other media.
  • Photo Sleuth: Real-life accounts on the research trail by Kurt Luther.
  • Antebellum Warriors: Mexican War, Regulars & Militias.
  • The Honored Few: Medal of Honor Recipients.
  • Most Hallowed Ground: Portraits and stories of those who rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
  • The Citizenry: Images of the Civil War generation.
  • Material Culture: Uniforms, equipment, weapons and related objects.
  • Stragglers: Distinctive images from MI contributors.
  • Behind the Backdrop: Origins, artistry and photographers by Adam Ochs Fleischer.
  • Vignette: Episodes of the Civil War by Scott Valentine.
  • The Last Shot.

Origins

In the summer of 1979, Harry Roach realized a dream when he published the first issue of MI. He set a broad mission to document the early photographic history of U.S. soldiers and sailors.

Roach was a pioneer. He started MI at a time when the importance of vernacular photographs of soldiers was just beginning to be understood and appreciated. He collaborated with a number of contributors, who shared his passion for historic military photographs of the citizen soldiers who forged our country. Issue after issue, subscribers glimpsed wonderful photographs and read informative, educational stories.

This was Roach’s legacy. Since he retired as Editor and Publisher in 2000, MI has continued as the leader in showcasing, interpreting, and preserving military images.

Our team

  • Ronald S. Coddington, Editor and Publisher. An active collector of Civil War era cartes de visite, Ron is the author of six books that document the lives of citizen soldiers in blue and gray: Faces of the Civil War, Faces of the Confederacy, African American Faces of the Civil War, Faces of the Civil War Navies, Faces of Civil War Nurses and Gettysburg Faces. He is formerly a columnist for the Civil War News and contributing author to the award-winning New York Times series Disunion. Ron has more than 30 years experience as a journalist at USA TODAY, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the San Jose Mercury News, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Read an interview with Ron about his job as Military Images editor.

  • Rick Brown, Executive Editor. Rick earned a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and shortly after graduation volunteered as a docent at the Civil War Library and Museum. He has been collecting since the late 1990’s with a focus on portrait photography and images related to Indiana. Examples from his collection have appeared in numerous books, includingColonels in Blue by Roger Hunt, Indiana in the Civil War by Nancy Pippen Eckerman, A Hoosier Quaker Goes to War by Sandy Barnard and The Harpers Ferry Anthology: Civil War-era Stories by Park Rangers and Volunteers. Rick also sells photographs. Images that he has sold have been on display at the Library of Congress and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  • Brian Boeve, Senior Editor. Brian has received awards for his photographic displays at national Civil War shows, and representative images from his collection have appeared in MI since the mid-1990s. His photos have also been featured in numerous books, including Confederate Faces in Color by Shannon Pritchard and Shane Kisner and Too Young to Die: Boy Soldiers of the Union Army 1861-1865 by Dennis M. Keesee. Brian’s keen eye and relentless pursuit of information about soldier images underscores the mission of MI to showcase, interpret and preserve early military photography. “So much knowledge can be gained when the dealers and collectors allow their photographs to be published. Images show us the truth about uniforms, weapons and equipment,” he notes, and adds, “We are able to look at the faces of the men who were willing to risk everything for what they believed.”

  • Kevin Canberg, Senior Editor. Kevin is an avid collector of American historic photography, and has been both researching and writing about early photography’s role during the Civil War era since his time as a journalism student at Loyola University Maryland. Images from his collection have been featured in numerous books and magazines, and he has placed historic photographs in major public collections and museums, including the Library of Congress. Kevin is a regular contributor of both photographs and articles to MI, including a featured gallery in the Fall 2018 issue. His Civil War-focused writing has also been published in periodicals including the Baltimore Sun. Kevin earned his JD from Pace University School of Law and makes his living as a legal risk management executive for a large financial services company. He shares a passion for early American images, art, and artifacts with his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Darcy.

  • Rick Carlile, Senior Editor.  Rick, who graduated from the University of Michigan Law School after serving two years in the U.S. Amy as a college ROTC graduate, recently retired after over 45 of practicing law. He has collected Civil War images since the late 1970’s, attempting to emulate the icons of that era—Herb Peck, Mike McAfee and Ronn Palm. Rick started collecting primarily hard images but has now morphed to cartes de visite, which today remain his favorite medium. Rick has had images from his collection appear in Ken Burn’s epic PBS TV series on the Civil War, as well as the subsequent book on the series. Rick has also had his images appear in well over 50 books and magazines, including ones published by Time-Life, National Geographic, University of Mississippi, Mowbray, Blue Acorn Press, Civil War Times Illustrated and of course MI. Rick wrote his first article for MI in early 1985. A long time member of the Company of Military Historians, Rick is also an avid student of the Civil War. For over 15 years he has taught an annual Civil War course for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Dayton.

  • Ron Field, Senior Editor.  Born in Hertford, England, in 1943, Ron was educated in Cheltenham, where he gained a Bachelor of Education (Hons) degree. He was Head of History at The Cotswold School at Bourton-on-the-Water until his retirement in 2007. Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1982, he also taught History at Piedmont High School in California from 1982-83. He was associate editor of the Confederate Historical Society of Great Britain from 1983 through 1992, and was elected a Fellow of The Company of Military Historians in 2005, following which he won the William K. Emerson Writing Award in 2012. In 2010 he was granted a Research Fellowship at the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, The John Hay Library, Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. A prolific author, Ron is an internationally acknowledged expert on U.S. military history.

  • Perry M. Frohne, Senior Editor. After serving in the Air Force and traveling the world for 8-plus years, Perry settled in California when he left the service. Watching Ken Burn’s epic PBS TV series about the Civil War rekindled his childhood love of that dramatic period of our history. He began dealing in 19th century military collectables full time in February 1991. Specializing in military images, his website began a campaign in 1998 against the fake and fraudulent photography appearing on eBay. Wisconsin born, he returned home in 2001. He has appeared in movies, on national radio, and published in various books, magazines & news articles over the course of a long career. After the 9/11 attacks Perry joined DHS for four years, and was a lead trainer in the detection of fake ID’s and passports. A prolific world traveller, he has a passion for history and the joy of collecting it.

  • Rich Jahn, Senior Editor. Rich is a longtime collector of Civil War portrait photography. An army veteran and Rutgers University graduate, he got his start during the Civil War centennial and later focused on Union and Confederate buckles before embracing ambrotypes and tintypes. A model citizen in the collecting community, Rich is well known to many in the hobby from his appearances at Civil War shows. Rich’s images have been featured in the Time Life Civil War series and in numerous issues of MI, including Volume 1, Number 1, and a gallery of representatives images in the Autumn 2017 issue. He has also served for many years as treasurer of his local Civil War Round Table. The father of two grown children, Rich is retired from 3M and lives with his wife Dianne in Paramus, N.J.

  • Charles T. Joyce, Senior Editor. Chuck, of Media, Pa., practices labor law in Philadelphia, paints urban and rural landscapes and is the Vice Chairman of the Rittenhouse Square Fine Art Association, which hosts the oldest outdoor fine art show in the U.S. He has been collecting Civil War images since 1999, and currently collects images and artifacts of soldiers killed, wounded, or captured at the Battle of Gettysburg. He first published in Military Images in 2005.

  • Kurt Luther, Senior Editor. Kurt is an associate professor of computer science and (by courtesy) history at Virginia Tech. He is the creator of Civil War Photo Sleuth, a free website that combines face recognition technology and crowdsourcing to identify unknown Civil War portraits. His Photo Sleuth column in MI, which he founded in 2014, has been a finalist for the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Awards. He has been named an American Civil War Museum Emerging Scholar, and his work on historical portrait identification has been featured by TIME, Smithsonian, and The History Channel. A Pittsburgh native, he now lives in Arlington, Virginia.

  • Ronn Palm, Senior Editor. Ronn is a pioneer collector of portrait photographs from the 1861-1865 period, and a significant part of his 10,000+ collection can be viewed at Ronn Palm’s Museum of Civil War Images, which he founded in 2000. A native Pennsylvanian, Ronn was born in the Pittsburgh area and now resides in Gettysburg. His particular focus of attention is the Pennsylvania Bucktail regiments. Images from his collection have appeared in numerous books, including The Bloody 85th: The Letters Of Milton McJunkin, A Western Pennsylvania Soldier In The Civil War.
  • Paul Russinoff, Senior Editor. Paul has a lifelong obsession with history. Embracing and focusing on the American Civil War as a sixth grader, Paul has collected, reenacted, wrote and helped promote battlefield preservation. Graduating from the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University in 1993, Paul works in the field of government relations in Washington, D.C. Paul was an original subscriber to Military Images and penned his first article for MI in 1998. Passionate about researching and identifying individual soldiers, Paul has contributed numerous images to MI and his collection was profiled in 2015. Images from Paul’s collection have appeared in books and magazines, including Blue and Gray, The Civil War Monitor, and Hallowed Ground. His images can also be found in the collection of the Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pa and the National Park Service collections at Antietam, Chattanooga, Corinth, Richmond and Stones River battlefields. In 2009, Paul was recognized as an honorary “Color Bearer” by the Civil War Trust for his work assisting their battlefield preservation efforts.

  • Dan Schwab, Senior Editor. Born and raised in northwest Ohio, he graduated from The Ohio State University. Dan has had a lifelong love of American history and is an avid collector of Civil War hard images and World War II era relics, especially items brought or sent home from the battlefield by American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. Images from his collection have been featured as galleries in the Summer 2015 and Spring 2017 issues of MI, the book Silent Witness by Ron Field and other published articles. Dan is an airline pilot and resides with his wife Brandy and children Ben and Audrey in Winchester, Va.

  • Phil Spaugy, Senior Editor. Phil is a longtime member of the North South Skirmish Association (N-SSA) who has served in numerous offices, including National Commander and the Board of Directors. He has also been active with the N-SSA’s Union Guards, 19th Indiana Infantry. Phil studies arms and accouterments of federal infantry soldiers with an emphasis on his home state of Ohio, firearms of the U.S Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, and the Iron Brigade. He has contributed his time and knowledge to the American Battlefield Trust video series, and has supported a range of initiatives, from the Adams County Historical Society’s museum, the restoration of the Brig. Gen. Solomon Meredith Statue in Indiana, the Ohio display at the acclaimed Civil War Museum in Kenosha, Wis., and much more. He is a partner, with Jim Hessler, in Hessler Spaugy Action Travel. A proud descendant of the Adams County, Pa., Fahnestock, Hartzel and Ziegler families, Phil is a retired aviation services company executive who lives in Vandalia, Ohio, with his wife, Amy.

  • Elizabeth Topping, Senior Editor. Elizabeth is a native Jerseyan but has called the Buckeye State home for many years. She has been a living historian, researcher, and collector for many decades, focusing on the roles women played in Civil War America. She has shared her images and research through award-winning displays, conferences, and presentations. Elizabeth has been a regular contributor to various magazines, with images in her collection as the focal point. She has appeared in several programs on the History Channel and A&E and has loaned images from her collection to a number of museums for display. When asked why she shares so freely she replies: “Why assemble all that information and not share what was learned?”

  • David W. Vaughan, Senior Editor. A native Atlantan who began seriously collecting Confederate images over 25 years ago, he has one of the most significant collections in the country. His images have graced the covers of major books and publications, including Time-Life Books, National Geographic, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Photography and the American Civil War, The New York Times, USA TODAY and many more. David has appeared on GPTV Treasures in your Attic and PBS History Detectives. He has also co-curated five exhibits with Georgia-based museums that were focused on Civil War images and featured selected photographs from his collection. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he is a past president of the Civil War Round Table of Atlanta. He also serves as a member on the University of Georgia Libraries’ Board of Visitors, and owns and operates Vaughan Estate Sales and Appraisals, Inc., a certified appraisal service that specializes in identifying hidden treasures in estates, appraising historic memorabilia and conducting estate sales.

  • Melissa A. Winn, Senior Editor. Melissa purchased her first medium format film camera at a yard sale when she was in 6th grade. She’s been enchanted with photographs ever since. Melissa is the marketing manager for the American Battlefield Trust, the nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving America’s hallowed battlegrounds and educating the public about the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and the Civil War. Previously, she was director of photography for HistoryNet, publisher of nine history-related magazines, including Civil War Times, America’s Civil War, and American History for which she served as the primary photo researcher, photographer, and a regular writer. She received a BA in English from the University of Wisconsin and has written for and published articles in multiple trade and commercial publications for more than 20 years. She was a 2015 finalist for the Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Portfolio. She’s a member of the Professional Photographers Association, Authors Guild, and the Center for Civil War Photography. Melissa collects Civil War photographs and ephemera, with an emphasis on Dead Letter Office images and Union General John A. Rawlins, chief of staff to General Ulysses S. Grant.

  • Buck Zaidel, Senior Editor. A dentist and longtime Civil War enthusiast, Buck collects images and objects related to Union soldiers’ daily lives. He has exhibited at Civil War and antique arms shows across the country, and contributed items to museum exhibitions including Photography in the American Civil War at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Images from his collection have been shared with numerous books and magazines including Military Images. He’s most proud of his contribution to Heroes For All Time / Connecticut Civil War Soldiers Tell Their Stories, a book he co-authored with Dione Longley that was awarded the top prize in public history by the Association for the Study of Connecticut History.

  • Jack Hurov, Copy Editor. A dedicated MI subscriber, Jack collects and researches Civil War military images in all formats. Among his mentors Jack includes Donald Bates, Sr., ‘I spent many an hour in Don’s ‘war-room’ appreciating his image collection, talking shop, and gaining valuable insights about image collecting.’ Jack is a Physical Therapist and brings 35-plus years of research, professional writing and editing experience to MI.

  • Chuck Myers, Copy Editor. Chuck brings 30 years of editorial writing, editing and photography experience to MI. His background includes magazine and wire service writing and editing on a wide range of a cultural, business and travel topics. Many of his past stories have related specifically to Civil War history and photography. He has also worked as a news and features photographer, and as a photo editor, with many visual assignments dedicated to special Civil War anniversary events to his credit.

Contributing editors

The following individuals have been recognized as Contributing Editors due to their significant involvement and support since MI was established: Richard Anthony, Michael Albanese, Dave Batalo, Dan Binder, John Mills Bigham, Brian Boeve, Martin Callahan, Rick Carlile, Helder Costa, Mike Cunningham, Marc Daniels, Mark Dunkelman, William Dunniway, Mike Fitzpatrick, Adam Ochs Fleischer, Anthony Gero, John Halliday, James Hennessey, Paul R. Johnson MD, Paul S. Johnson, Steven Karnes, Philip Katcher, Ross J. Kelbaugh, Robert Kotchian, C. Paul Loane, Richard Leisenring Jr., Thomas Lowry, M.D., Ron Maness, Roy Mantle, Bobby McCoy, Phil McCoy, Mike Medhurst, Chris Nelson, Mahlon Nichols, Dale Niesen, Roger Norland, David Norris, Seward Osborne, Matthew L. Oswalt M.D., Paul Russinoff, Richard Ricca, Stephen Rogers, Marty Schoenfeld, John Sickles, Guy Smith, Phil Spaugy, Kyle M. Stetz, David Sullivan, Karl Sundstrom, Elizabeth A. Topping, Jack Trotter, Scott Valentine, David W. Vaughan, Mike Werner, J. Dale West, Jonathan W. White, Richard A. Wolfe and Doug York.