Boy With A Wasting Disease
The boy had contracted the tuberculosis bacterium, causing a wasting disease among the scourges of the 19th century. Here he reclines in a camp alongside his grieving sister — both of them orphaned refugees amidst the devastation of the Civil War — their home now a make-shift tent, their uppermost concerns finding enough to eat, keeping warm and staying alive. The two young actors recreating history caught my attention in another of those serendipitous moments illuminated by slanted morning light.
