Manassas National Battlefield

Author's Comments

There is a particular kind of silence that settles over Manassas in the early morning, and I have come to think of it as the whole point of going. Henry Hill in September, just after sunrise, with the mist still sitting low in the fields and the fence lines emerging slowly as the light comes up - that is the photograph worth setting an alarm for. The battlefield does not announce itself. It looks, at first, like any stretch of Virginia farmland, rolling and unremarkable, and then you stand there for a while and the weight of it arrives. I photograph this place wide. The horizon is long and low, the sky does most of the work, and the first battle monument gives you something to anchor the foreground without crowding the frame. Fall is the stronger season - the grasses turn the color of wheat and straw, and the oaks at the edges of the fields go rust before they drop. Spring works too, in a greener and softer register, but autumn light here has more grief in it, and grief is what the landscape seems to want. Crowds are not a concern. I have stood on Henry Hill at golden hour on a Saturday in October and had the entire rise to myself. That is rare this close to Washington, and it is part of why I keep coming back.

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