Photographer h. casser-jayne to sign her new book in South Florida bookstores

STILL LIFE, images of ANTIETAM, is the first serious book of photographs to be published on the historic Battle of Antietam since 1866, when Civil War photographer, Alexander Gardner, published his work, Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War. Mr. Gardner’s photographs of Antietam were a milestone in the field of photojournalism. His images taken at Antietam were the first to record a battle before the dead were buried.

Ms. Casser-Jayne’s work has been lauded by historians. Antietam National Battlefield Park Superintendent, John Howard, in his forward to the book calls Ms. Casser-Jayne’s achievement “a new monument to those who fought and to those who help us remember.”

Featuring 70 duotone images and 70 Civil War era quotes meticulously researched in the Battlefield’s extensive archives, this striking 152-page book captures the spirit that inhabits the Maryland battlefield. Her portraits of living historians bring heart to history allowing the viewer to feel the human toll of war. With her adept camera ability, Ms. Casser-Jayne defines the contradiction of America’s best-preserved battlefield in evocative, often-poignant landscapes that reveal the awkward beauty in the savagery of the killing fields.

The Battle of Antietam remains the bloodiest single day in American military history. More than twenty-thousand men were killed, wounded, or missing; their fates uncertain in mere hours.

Ms. Casser-Jayne’s work is not a then-and-now book. “I was stunned upon viewing the photographs that are this book,” said Superintendent John Howard. “They made me, forced me, to look in an unfamiliar way at that, which I look at every day. The view is that of an artists’ eye. Emotional? Yes!” Dr. Joseph L. Harsh calls STILL LIFE “a book for those who reach out to feel the past.”

The $32.95 book also features a battle overview by eminent historian Dr. Thomas G. Clemens.

H. Casser-Jayne has been a working artist for two decades. She attended the University of Miami, and studied photography at The New School and Shepherd University. A former war correspondent, she became fascinated with Antietam when she discovered a Civil War era bullet on her farm two miles across the Potomac River from the battlefield. She is currently at work on the second book of a projected trilogy, the Pennsylvania campaign.