Photography in the Civil War Domain Statement

The first camera was built in France. Two French artists named Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre worked together on the camera from 1829 to 1833. When Niépce died in 1833, Daguerre continued working on the camera (Nardo 18). His prototype used a thin, rectangular plate that was coated with a thin layer of silver and exposed to iodine and bromide fumes. The photographer would slide the plate into the back of the camera where it exposed to the sunlight and records the image before the camera (18). Samuel F.B. Morse, commonly known for his invention of the telegraph and Morse code, travelled to Europe in 1838 to track down Daguerre. After observing Daguerre’s camera, Morse travelled back to New York in 1839 where he built a camera based on Niépce and Daguerre’s. He called the images developed by the camera Daguerreotypes (19). Morse began working with John W. Draper to further develop the invention (20).

Years after Morse and Draper’s work, in the mid-1850s, the Daguerreotype was replaced by wet collodion processes (Cooper). This process was just as difficult as the Daguerreotype process; the photographer had to place the wet plate in the plate holder, attach it to the back of the camera, aim the lens at the subject, remove the cover and expose the plate for a few seconds, and finally develop with mercury in a darkroom (Nardo 5-6). The tintype process, a type of collodion process, gained a large amount of popularity before and during the Civil War. Photographers made many small tintypes called “gems” and medals of candidates for the campaign of 1860 (Cooper).

When the Civil War came, photographers not only took portraits of military commanders, but they also photographed scenes of the battlefield, daily life in...

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...d vivid photographs from Antietam were published by newspapers, offering a new personal involvement in the war by civilians (Sachs et al.), (Wala). Even though Gardner’s photos were a breakthrough in Civil War photography, they were rarely credited to him. Brady usually took credit for his work (Wala). Gardner and two other photographers arrived at Gettysburg around the fifth of July, just two days after the conclusion of the battle there (Nardo 9). In Gardner’s photo from July sixth, titled “Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter”, there is enough evidence to conclude that Gardner moved the corpse 72 yards and posed it for dramatic effect (Nardo 10-11). Gardner wanted to make a name for himself and build a reputation, but he could not because Brady was branding Gardner’s work as his own. In 1863, Gardner and Brady split and became competition for each other (Nardo 28).