How Did Photography Shape Public Reactions to the American Civil War?

1656 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Civil war photography essay

Criteria A: Plan of Investigation
This investigation asks the question "How did photography shape public reactions to the American Civil War?” The investigation will take into account the leading photographers’ works of the time, such as Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner, and how the public responded to the images that were shared and what value the images had. It will assess the public reaction by looking at press publications similar to those of The New York Times and Harper's Weekly. Publications such as these evaluated the galleries of the artists what they provided for the viewers. The value of the photographs to today's historians is also taken into account.

Criteria B: Summary of Evidence
During the Civil War, many Americans wanted more than written descriptions of the epic battle in eastern Pennsylvania. They craved visual records- photographs of the fields where so many brave men, northerners and southerners alike, had fallen (Nardo 4). The press thrilled readers with its written descriptions of the exploits of these larger-than-life characters. But the average person knew little of a personal nature about them, including what they looked like (Nardo 45). [The photographs] provided a way for the people to see such living legends up close, to look them in the eye, so to speak, and get a glimpse of their humanity (Nardo 45).
Though the photographers would often stage their photographs, they are still witness to real events (Trachtenberg 73). What the photograph depicted originated, as everyone understood, in the world itself, not in the imagination-even if objects must be moved to realize the photographer’s intention (Trachtenberg 83). It defined and perhaps even helped unify the nation through an unrehearsed and uns...

... middle of paper ...

...Fava and Leah W. Jewett. Civil War Book Review. N.p., Winter 2003. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
Lee, Anthony W., and Elizabeth Young. On Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War. Berkeley: University of California, 2007. Print.
Stille, Darlene R. The Civil War through Photography. Chicago, IL: Heinemann Library, 2013. Print.
Rosenheim, Jeff L. Photography and the American Civil War:. New Haven: Yale Univ., 2013. Print.
Widmer, Ted. "Cameristas." Opinionator Cameristas Comments. The New York Times, 2 May 2013. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
Sandler, Martin W. America Through the Lens: Photographers Who Changed the Nation. New York: Henry Holt and, 2005. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of John Reekie's The Burial Party

    1929 Words  | 4 Pages

    There are many different ways in which the war was represented to the public, including drawings, newspaper articles, and detailed stereographs. Stereographs such as John Reekie’s “The Burial Party” invoked mixed feelings from all of those who viewed it. It confronts the deaths caused by the Civil War as well as touches upon the controversial issue over what would happen to the slaves once they had been emancipated. This picture represents the Civil War as a trade-off of lives- fallen soldiers gave their lives so that enslaved black men and women could be given back their own, even if that life wasn’t that different from slavery. In his carefully constructed stereograph “The Burial Party,” John Reekie confronts the uncertainty behind the newly

    Read More

  • How Did The American Civil War Affected American Literature?

    58 Words  | 1 Pages

    The American Civil War caused a dramatic shift in style, form, and thematic discourse in American literature because it affected the people in the way they saw morality and reality. The works after the Civil War were mainly focused on how they experienced the war and its effects. It also caused some antiwar works and more on

    Read More

  • Women Spies in the American Civil War

    2024 Words  | 5 Pages

    Endres, Kathleen L. "The Women's Press in the Civil War: A Portrait of Patriotism, Propaganda, and Prodding." Civil War History 30.1 (1984): 31-53. Project

    Read More

  • Fsa Photography During the Great Depression

    936 Words  | 2 Pages

    I glance amusedly at the photo placed before me. The bright and smiling faces of my family stare back me, their expressions depicting complete happiness. My mind drifted back to the events of the day that the photo was taken. It was Memorial Day and so, in the spirit of tradition my large extended family had gathered at the grave of my great grandparents. The day was hot and I had begged my mother to let me join my friends at the pool. However, my mother had refused. Inconsolable, I spent most of the day moping about sulkily. The time came for a group picture and so my grandmother arranged us all just so and then turned to me saying, "You'd better smile Emma or you'll look back at this and never forgive yourself." Eager to please and knowing she would never let it go if I didn't, I plastered on a dazzling smile. One might say a picture is worth a thousand words. However, who is to say they are the accurate or right words? During the 1930s, photographers were hired by the FSA to photograph the events of the Great Depression. These photographers used their images, posed or accurate, to sway public opinion concerning the era. Their work displayed an attempt to fulfill the need to document what was taking place and the desire to influence what needed to be done.

    Read More

  • Abraham Lincoln: America’s First Commander-in-Chief

    1884 Words  | 4 Pages

    Simpson, Brooks D., Stephen W. Sears, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean, eds. The Civil War: Told by Those Who Lived It. New York: The Library of America, 2011. Print.

    Read More

  • Visual Culture of the Civil Rights Movement

    706 Words  | 2 Pages

    Photographers had begum to document and publicize the issues of the race problem and the struggle for equal rights in the United States in the early 1900s. Early photographs documented protests against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and captured protest...

    Read More

  • The Mirror With A Memory Analysis

    417 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the chapter, “The Mirror with a Memory”, the authors, James Davidson and Mark Lytle, describe numerous things that evolved after the civil war, including the life of Jacob Riis, the immigration of new peoples in America, and the evolution of photography. The authors’ purpose in this chapter is to connect the numerous impacts photography had on the past as well as its bringing in today’s age.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Torie Deghett's The War Photo No One Would Publish

    1495 Words  | 3 Pages

    An image has the explicit power of telling a story without saying any words, that’s the power behind a photo. A photo tends to comes with many sides to a story, it has the ability to manipulate and tell something differently. There is a tendency in America, where explicit photos of war or anything gruesome occurring in the world are censored for the public view. This censorship hides the reality of our world. In “The War Photo No One Would Publish” Torie DeGhett centers her argument on censorship, detailing the account of graphic Gulf War photo the American press refused to publish. (73) DeGhett argues that the American public shouldn’t be restrained from viewing graphic content of the war occurring around the world. She believes that incomplete

    Read More

  • The Alice Williamson Diary

    3370 Words  | 7 Pages

    I keep my journal hidden; the script, the drawings, the color, the weight of the paper, contents I hope never to be experienced by another. My journal is intensely personal, temporal and exposed. When opening the leather bound formality of Alice Williamson's journal a framework of meaning is presupposed by the reader's own feelings concerning the medium. Reading someone else's diary can be, and is for myself, an voyeuristic invasion of space. The act of reading makes the private and personal into public. Yet, for Alice Williamson and many other female journalists of the Civil War period, the journal was creating a public memory of the hardship that would be sustained when read by others. The knowledge of the outside reader reading of your life was as important as the exercise of recording for one's self; creating a sense of sentimentality connecting people through emotions. (Arnold)

    Read More

  • Lange Picture Paper

    725 Words  | 2 Pages

    The mass media carries with it unparalleled opportunities to impart information, but also opportunities to deceive the public, by misrepresenting an event. While usually thought of as falsifying or stretching facts and figures, manipulation can just as easily be done in the use of photography and images. These manipulations may be even more serious – and subtle – than written manipulations, since they may not be discovered for years, if ever, and can have an indelible and lasting impact on the viewer, as it is often said, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. One of the most significant images of Twentieth Century America was the photograph of a migrant mother holding her child. The photograph was taken during the Great Depression by photographer Dorothea Lange, and has remained an enduring symbol of the hardship and struggle faced by many families during the Depression Era. This image was also an example of the manipulation of photography, however, for it used two major forms of manipulation that remain a problem in journalistic photography.

    Read More

  • The Soiling Of Old Glory Analysis

    1612 Words  | 4 Pages

    For Stanley Forman, a photographer of the Herald American news, it was unlike any other day heading to work. News in Boston, which had been going on for months, stated that the protest over a “court-ordered school desecration” was still being held as active. Assigned the task, Forman’s job was to take photos at the City Hall Plaza, where a couple of high school students would demonstrate to the crowd. It seems that Forman wasn’t in such a hurry; however, what came next soon baffled a life as the “agitated” students made their way to a well-dressed black man and attacked as he was walking to City Hall. As the man tried to flee, he found himself about to be assaulted with an American flag by one of the protestors. Forman, who had already snapped over a dozen photos at the scene, caught the image (Sullivan). Although the photo taken was nearly three decades ago, The Soiling of Old Glory caused shock towards the entire nation, which stirred emotions and confusion. It caused a wide range of effects, which drastically changed the lives of the photographer and two main people in the photo. However, because of Boston’s negative view from the public made the photo unnecessary to publish.

    Read More

  • Should Photojournalism or Documentary Photography Be Considred Art?

    2303 Words  | 5 Pages

    "Smithsonian Curator Looks at Civil War's Influence on American Art." VTDigger. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

    Read More

  • Pipilotti Rist and Virtual Utopia

    1313 Words  | 3 Pages

    The camera is presented as a living eye in her work, capable of bending and twisting, contorting reality in its own light. It is at the same time a sensuous device, one that exp...

    Read More

  • Coles’ Ideas in The Tradition: Fact and Fiction

    1546 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The documentary tradition as a continually developing “record” that is made in so many ways, with different voices and vision, intents and concerns, and with each contributor, finally, needing to meet a personal text” (Coles 218). Coles writes “The Tradition: Fact and Fiction” and describes the process of documenting, and what it is to be a documentarian. He clearly explains through many examples and across disciplines that there is no “fact or fiction” but it is intertwined, all in the eye of the maker. The documentarian shows human actuality; they each design their own work to their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and whom they want the art to appeal to. Coles uses famous, well-known photographers such as Dorthea Lange and Walker Evans, who show the political angle in their documentations and the method of cropping in the process of making the photo capture exactly what the photographer wants the audience to view. In this paper I will use outside sources that support and expand on Coles ideas with focus on human actuality, the interiority of a photograph, and the emotional impact of cropping.

    Read More

  • Photojournalism Essay

    719 Words  | 2 Pages

    Photojournalism plays a critical role in the way we capture and understand the reality of a particular moment in time. As a way of documenting history, the ability to create meaning through images contributes to a transparent media through exacting the truth of a moment. By capturing the surreal world and presenting it in a narrative that is relatable to its audience, allows the image to create a fair and accurate representation of reality.

    Read More

More about How Did Photography Shape Public Reactions to the American Civil War?

Open Document