Summer Scene, 1866 by G. Gable

Harry Stephens was a former house servant of Alexander Hamilton Stephens, vice-president of the Confederacy and, after the war, U.S. senator. The photograph was likely made on the grounds of Liberty Hall, Alexander Stephens's home in Crawfordsville, Georgia. In its modest scale, careful annotation, and evocative title, the photograph remains a personal document that is nonetheless especially poignant and monumental. Harry and Eliza Stephens and their five children had survived slavery and the war. A local photographer's success at recording the family's collective possession of their new freedom is one of the more remarkable achievements of the still unseasoned medium.

Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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