Photography In The Civil War

“Photography is all about secrets. The secrets we all have and will never tell.” (page 215)

Mathew Brady was an important photographer who told the story of the Civil War. Brady was born in New York on May 18, 1822. While he was young, Mathew worked underneath Samuel Morse and learned how to use a daguerreotype to take photos. Mathew began advertising in the local paper that he was willing to take portraits. It was while taking a portrait he met his wife, Julie Handy. Mathew photographed many famous americans, such as John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln. After the Civil War broke out, Brady wrote first to his friend General Winfield Scott to ask for permission to come and photograph the battles. Scott told him to write to President Lincoln, and Lincoln allowed Brady to continue. Brady recruited 17 men to help him with his task.

Although Mathew Brady was best known for his photojournalism of the Civil War, he also became successful as a portrait photographer. A lot of his friends tried to discourage to go into battlefield and take photographs but he didn’t stop. I love what he said later when he went to capture battlefield portrait. He said, "I felt that I had to go. A spirit in my feet said 'Go,' and I went." This why photographer like Mathew and other didn’t care what will happen to them, they care about who will do it or change it if they don’t. This is why in 1862, Mathew Brady shocked America by displaying Alexander Gardner's and James Gibson's photographs of battlefield corpses from Antietam. This exhibition marked the first time most people witnessed the carnage

Mathew Brady the father of photography decided to capture the historical civil war, sending his employees out with the Union armies. At the time of the civil war Brady had begun to go blind so his twenty employees photographed most of the events themselves, still they stamped in the corner of every photograph “photo by Brady.” Brady’s employees mostly took photographs after the events had taken place due to the need of the subject and its surroundings to be still for 15 to 20 seconds. Brady put the photographs on exhibit in New York City a New York Times writer wrote “If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along the streets, he has done something very like it.” During the time of the Civil War Newspapers and magazines

The role of the news-making photographer in Gardner’s era was to document the history that was in the making, documenting the battlefield and anyone that would be considered a pioneer of the news. They also had a role to make large photographic prints. Today, photojournalist’s play the role of being a visual story teller. They have to photograph, edit and present the images they shot to tell a story that no one else can tell. They have to be knowledgeable about the trade and have to be able to use all the tools provided really well. The time from Gardner’s era and today technology has changed and the equipment has advanced so far that more advancement is continued to be used to the fullest. The only thing that I have really seen be

Photography opened the world’s view. “Until 1839 the world was blind. Vision was limited to the immediate spectator or the art of the artist, but the rest of the world and history could not see” (Horan 3). People imagine things and do not believe it until they see it. Unless someone has really seen it they believe what they want. Mathew Brady showed people what war was really like. Before Mathew Brady’s pictures people thought that war was an adventure and fighting was honorable but they never knew what it was like. War was extremely violent and people did not realize this except the ones who had experienced it. When they saw the pictures of the war most people were appalled. “Mr. Brady has done something to bring home

Ever since the camera was invented in 1839, the very nature of photography has been questioned. With the increasing advent of photographic technology, photography has become an egalitarian expression of society and community. With one press of a button, an image is captured for eternity, bringing to question the inherent artistic quality of photographs. If we can so quickly capture an image, can this be deemed art? Art is to promote fantasy, and dream, to incite anger and joy. Thus, surely photography is an art, as seen through its capturing of beautiful verdant landscapes, and the horrendous

As mankind rapidly evolved recording events became harder. Early history is only able to be pictured with using our imagination. Often times historians often clash about what the world looked like. Ancient civilizations from the Mayans and Aztecs have never been seen while they were in their pristine condition. The world is left with written descriptions and ruins not only of the cities themselves, but also the tools used. After the camera was invented in the early 1800s, events were more frequently recorded and it was clear what tools and cities looked like before modern-day. Photography has undoubtedly altered how we document events, created new job openings, and will give generations to come amazing art and show defining moments from each generation. Photography has helped evolve the world by creating new jobs and revolutionizing how events are documented.

    With the advances of photography so came about new ways of showing people things during war time! The people finally had a way of truly experiencing what the soldiers had to go through. The old way was to look at painting’s that could be biased to one fighting force or the other. With photos there was no hiding the truth, it was there for the people to see. The first war to truly be photographed was The Mexican American war. There were four innovations for pictures before the Civil war.

Photography was still a new and developing art form and journalistic tool at the start of the civil war, the first commercially successful photographic process had only been available for twenty years (daguerreobase) . And although the civil war wasn’t the first war to be photographed, it was the first to be extensively photographed, and possibly the most affected by it. Images of soldiers, battle fields, and leading figures taken by photographers of the time provided the American people with a comprehensive visual of what the war really looked like.

Photography was first used in the United States prior to the Civil War as a way of making portraits of people. Due to the limits of the technology, each photograph was a unique image that could not be reproduced. Over time as the technology improved, photographs could be reproduced and this art form was then used as a method of communicating and sharing images of places and themes. The use of photography during the Civil War to depict (show) battles is one example. While the effect of photography on people’s perceptions of the Civil War has been well-documented, the changes in technology gave photography a more extensive influence on public opinion, institutions and the way people lived after the Civil War.

For as long as mankind has inhabited this earth, there are those who will always seek to lord over others. With this comes violence, whether that is in defense or comes from malevolence, and soon thereafter, war. Thousands of years, countless cultures, religions and ideals, and the one thing they all have in common is war. For most of the wars fought throughout our known existence, family and friends awaited to hear from their loved ones who went out to fight, some for years, and when finally news arrived, it meant the ones who were waited for were not coming home. People were left with only word of mouth, fractured bits of information of what transpired on the battlefield. Some would translate their experiences into art - from cave paintings

Many people during the Civil War did not have an accurate representation of the war. Paintings and drawings provided some certainty as to what events took place, but these genres of art only glorified the battles with lots of color, as well as exaggerated representations of the losing and winning sides. Photography, compared to painting and drawing, had no room for contradictory statements, as it depicted what happened at that moment of time. In late September 1862, Mathew Brady opened an exhibition entitled “The dead of Antietam” at his gallery in New York. A reporter from New York Times described the photographs as a “funeral next door… It attracts your attention, but it does not enlist your sympathy… It is very different when the hearse

In the mid 1800’s the first photo was taken. This was a big phenomenon in history because of the change of events since then. One of the biggest events in history that the photograph had an impact on was the Civil War. The images of the Civil War were important because they could coney much more than words could alone. “It is really not the photographs themselves that provoke us; rather, as I said, it is the memory of close personal encounters with the subject(s) of the photographs,” (Rudolph). The importance that the images of the Civil War had, was not the images themselves but rather the importance that the images held behind the picture itself. There are three ways photos have impacted the Civil War, they are able to tell what happened, they provide and emotional connection to the event, and they provide memories.

“If the boundaries and nature of photography were unclear in 1839, so too were the boundaries of modern science. On 7 January, neither the