Michael Miley photo equipment
A generous donation from a VHS member recently added to the collections an assortment of camera equipment owned by renowned Lexington photographer Michael Miley.
Raised on a farm in Rockbridge County, Michael Miley (1841–1918) was twenty-five and a Confederate veteran when he followed Robert E. Lee to Lexington in 1866 and opened a photographic studio there. He had learned the craft only a year earlier, in Staunton. Miley would go on to produce some of the most engaging portraits ever made of the general.
Following Lee's death in 1870, Miley kept active by photographing life in and near Lexington. In business with his son Henry, Miley found a reliable source of income from annual commissions to photograph the students of Washington and Lee University and Virginia Military Institute. Their business continued into the 1930s.
View fourteen photographs made by Michael Miley, including three of Robert E. Lee, in the online exhibition, Michael Miley: General Lee's Photographer
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