Visual Culture during the Civil War

1. Visual Culture during the Civil War

2. Thinking about Images Learning to Look: Decoding Photographs Art-iculation: The Elements of Art Visual Culture and American Studies: Historicizing Images

3. Photography and the First �Living Room War�

4. Preliminary Questions: Which medium had greater influence on popular interpretation of the Civil War, lithography or photography? What unique insights can we garner from each medium? How can photography�s impact on public opinion during the Civil War be measured?

5. Photographers unable to produce images of the fighting itself Photographed the dead immediately after battle Sometimes rearranged bodies or photographed them from different angles and then attributed them to different locations on the battlefield Grimmer aspects of fighting had never before been presented to the public at large in this way Had effect of stripping away many of the illusions that civilians might have had about battle

6. Civil War Photographers: Mathew Brady (1823-1896) Alexander Gardner (1821-1882) George Barnard (1819-1902) Timothy O�Sullivan (1840-1882) Southern Photographer:George S, Cook (1819-1902)

7. Mathew Brady Brady sought to document the war by bringing his photographic studio right onto the battlefields First popular photographs of the conflict were at the First Battle of Bull Run Equipped 23 other photographers with traveling darkrooms to photograph war scenes Production costly and receipts disappointing U.S. government purchased Brady�s plates, but he died a financial failure in 1896.

8. During the Civil War, the process of taking photographs was complex and time-consuming. Two photographers would arrive at a location. One would mix chemicals and pour them on a clean glass plate. After the chemicals were given time to evaporate, the glass plate would be sensitized by being immersed -- in darkness -- in a bath solution. Placed in a holder, the plate would then be inserted in the camera, which had been positioned and focused by the other photographer. Exposure of the plate and development of the photograph had to be completed within minutes; then the exposed plate was rushed to the darkroom wagon for developing. Each fragile glass plate had to be treated with great care after development -- a difficult task on a battlefield. 

9. Camera operators had to stay away from battle scenes until the fighting had ceased. They could not stand up behind their bulky box cameras, which were mounted on tall tripods, while bullets and cannon balls flew around them. Mark Neely, The Union Image (2000)

10. When the photographers arrived in Gettysburg, they found battlefields strewn with corpses, and set up their cameras to record the scenes. The two most famous images of the Sketch Book were taken at Gettysburg: Harvest of Death, by O�Sullivan, and Home of the Rebel Sharpshooter, by Gardner. Both images depict the human cost of warfare in very stark terms, directly confronting a few of the many corpses the photographers encountered. It has been determined that Gardner added a rifle from his collection of props, and moved the body of the sharpshooter to construct a more artistic composition for his own photograph. His accompanying text, written three years later, is likewise a heavily fictionalized account of the sharpshooter�s demise. Gardner�s Photographic Sketch Book of the War

15. Lithography invented 1798 Chromolithography -- first method for making true multi-color prints -- commercialized in the 1830s Currier and Ives and popular lithography Currier had been in business since 1834 Ives became partner in 1857 Illustrated newspapers

17. Battle art reached the man in the street mainly through the pictures of the commercial art publishers. By 1860 there were several hundred picture publishers in the United States, led by the large printhouse of Currier and Ives. Using fast printing and coloring techniques, they sold prints, cartoons, portraits, and many other types of pictures for as little as five cents apiece. Bookdealers displayed their prints in their shop windows, pushcart men hawked them in the streets, and Currier and Ives stacked hundreds of their cheaper prints on tables on the sidewalk in front of their New York shop to accommodate browsers. They portrayed a variety of subjects�farm scenes, frontier life, steamboat and railroad races, portraits of hunting dogs and game birds and champion racehorses and prize fighters, and a host of sentimentals for the women. But war pictures and portraits were always a particular favorite with their customers. --William F. Thompson, The Image of War(1959), 16.

21. Thompson notes the contrast between commercial and non-commercial depictions of the war Example of artistic renderings of warfare: John Trumbull�s battle scenes from the American Revolution

24. Popular depictions of the Civil War

26. Affordable, mass-produced pictures illuminated stories of Civil War courage, victory, and defeat Such prints often framed and proudly displayed in parlors, dining rooms, and libraries of northern home NYC lithography firm Currier and Ives one of the first to respond pictorially to the start of the war

27. Neely notes that �The firms�s bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor offered a news-hungry public a convincing depiction of the beleaguered fort�and its grand flag�engulfed in smoke.�

28. The buyers of popular prints found their morals raised by the vigorous action and flag-waving patriotism of action prints Currier and Ives battle prints produced quickly to capitalize on headlines (completed as little as two weeks after the battle) Remarkably fast -- mass production of images still a tedious process accomplished mostly by hand War lithographs were �hastily composed according to formula� Neely, The Union Image

33. Lithography versus Photography: Engravings and lithographs �came quickly to reflect strong beliefs and deep emotions� Photography by no means usurped the role of �illustration� previously held by engraving and photography. Photographs could not be reproduced in newspapers or books during the Civil War, and illustration, understood as adding images to printed matter, remained almost entirely the realm of the engraver and lithographer. As for �illustrating� the events of the war in images for the Victorian home, it is not clear that printmakers felt competition from photography at all. In fact, photographs proved an aid in the lithographers� work, providing accurate portrait models of heroes, together with images of the scenes of campaigns and weapons of war. Photographs couldn�t compete with prints in depicting action, heroism, color, and patriotism Neely, The Union Image

34. Mass-produced images of the human costs of battle

37. Visual Culture and the Multiple Meanings of the Civil War