Theodore P. Savas - Bradys Civil War Journal: Photographing the War 1861–65

F OREWORD

There are many reasons for studying the American Civil War, and people around the world have been discovering these reasons since the day the guns fell silent.

Some 600,000 Americans died during its four years of brutal, bloody combatmore than all of America's other wars combined. When the fighting ended, so did the tragedy of slavery in the United States. The war forged a still rather loose confederation of states into a united country with a strong national identity and a stronger central government; the conflict between States' Rights and secession was resolved at the point of the sword. The conflict was in many ways the first modern war. This is true not only because of advances in weapons' technology, railroads, or the telegraph, but because it played out in front of the unblinking eye of the camera. For the first time, the reality of the horrors of war was brought home through the new medium of photography, which captured the harvest of death in clear, unprecedented detail.

In 1861, photography was still a relatively new medium and nothing like the easy point and shoot method we use today. The first monochrome process of adhering permanently an image onto metal plates was only perfected in 1832. By 1850, the collodion process had become the primary means of preserving photographic images. Using chemicals to burn the black and white image onto a glass plate negative, the photographer could then transfer that image onto a cardboard card, called an albumen print. The process required the subject to sit still for several minutes while the image was saved onto the glass plate; even the slightest movement could blur the image and render it unusable. However, a properly preserved image had remarkable detail, sharpness, and clarity. The difficulty in obtaining a good clear image explains why capturing photographs of marching men or an actual battle remained beyond the technology of the day.

Photography quickly became more accessible to the public when cartes de visite were introduced to the American public in 1859. Developed and patented in Paris in the mid-1850s by a creative photographer named Andr Disdri, the cartes de visite was a small photograph made from an albumen print, about 2 x 3 inches, glued or otherwise mounted on a slightly larger card. The mass popularity in Europe of this style of photograph quickly made its way to the United States just a short time before the Civil War broke out in Charleston harbor in April 1861.

By 1861, most cities of any size had at least one photographic studio. The most famous of all belonged to Mathew Brady in Washington, D. C. Brady's early life is not well known.