Storyteller Megan Wells as Clara Barton

This Memorial Day, we’re proud to present our portrait of professional storyteller Megan Wells as Clara Barton.

Clara Barton was the sixth of the portraits we photographed in the series of women Megan plays in her dramatic interactive historical impersonations.

A Brief Summary

We remember Clara Barton on this Memorial Day for the brave part she played in saving the lives of soldiers during the American Civil War. Clara Barton began her career as an educator in her home state of Massachusetts before moving to Washington, D.C., where she worked at the US Patent Office. Her life changed drastically at the outbreak of the Civil War, when she volunteered her services as a nurse to wounded soldiers. As the war intensified, so too did Clara Barton’s involvement. She worked on the front lines and treated wounded soldiers on both sides. By the end of the war, Clara Barton was running the hospitals at the front lines. She was compared to Florence Nightingale for the service she gave the wounded.

After the war, Clara Barton organized efforts to find missing soldiers. She spent the rest of her life furthering the humanitarian work she began during the Civil War.

Our Portrait

Our portrait places Clara in front of a Civil War painting showing clashing Union and Confederate forces. A decorative motif outlines part of the portrait, framing Clara. Megan’s Clara is fearless, capable of handling anything the war or the world can throw at her. Speaking with Megan about Clara, Megan describes her as the opposite of Florence Nightingale (who Megan portrayed in our first session). Where Florence had a strong intellect but a weak body, Clara Barton was physically strong and vital, “a horse woman.” Megan describes her as a woman with a touch of Scarlett O’Hara.

From the beginning, we knew we wanted to put Clara Barton in a different environment, so we photographed her on a gray background that would make her dark clothing easy to extract. We experimented with several different looks for our portrait of Clara before we landed on this version. Our primary challenge was to ground Clara in the time in which she lived. Taking inspiration from our portrait of Nannerl Mozart, where we used a painting of the Mozart family as background, we likewise used a painting for Clara’s background, this time creating a frame within the portrait rather than outside of it.

Of course I had to make an old fashioned black-and-white version for Clara too, so that we could conjure the aesthetic of the age.

As always, it is a pure pleasure working with Megan on her historical characters. She brings the whole character to the studio, and she makes every character unique and interesting and alive. I’m proud of the work we’ve done together so far, and I look forward to showing off the last character from our second session very soon.

Happy Memorial Day, one and all. As we think of those we have lost, let us also be grateful for the ones that were spared, thanks to the work of remarkable people like Clara Barton.