In observation of the 225th anniversary of the Battles of Saratoga, a turning point of the American Revolutionary War, Theodore Coulombe and Alan Krathaus present a photographic vision of the Battles of Saratoga. The exhibition features an installation of light boxes and color photographs taken by the artists as they reenacted historical scenes in period costume. The photographs are excerpts from a twenty-nine-image narrative that traces the journey led by British Lieutenant General John Burgoyne (“Gentleman Johnny”) through the Champlain and Saratoga regions during his 1777 campaign against the colonial forces.
Burgoyne led an opulent lifestyle and fancied himself a “playwright-soldier.” During his 1777 campaign in northern New York he traveled with wagons filled with personal luxuries. “In similar fashion,” says Coulombe, “we donned rented British officer uniforms and photographed ourselves in poses reminiscent of eighteenth-century portrait paintings, while retracing the trail of Burgoyne’s army.”