Civil War Photographs

It was so nearly like visiting the battle-field to look over these [photographs], that all the emotions excited by the actual sight of the stained and sordid scene, strewed with rags, and wrecks, came back to us, and we buried them in the recesses of our cabinet as we would have buried the mutilated remains of the dead they too vividly represented.

--Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Doings of the Sunbeam," The Atlantic, 1862

The Civil War. Parades and soldiers. Injuries and death.
And all of it, the infantry formations and the bloody aftermath of battles, commemmorated and preserved by the camera.

Most of the Civil War photographs were taken by assistants working under the supervision of Matthew B. Brady.

Brady himself, however, took very few of the photographs.

The Library of Congress has its Selected Civil War Photographs Collection, cotaining 1,118 photographs, available on the web.

Picturing Truth

Spirit Trouts

Maintained by jmnookin@bug.village.virginia.edu
URL: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/ensp982/mnookin/civilwar.html

	The Civil War. Parades and soldiers. Injuries and death.	And all of it, the infantry formations and the bloody aftermath of battles, commemmorated and preserved by the camera.

	Most of the Civil War photographs were taken by assistants working under the supervision of Matthew B. Brady.	Brady himself, however, took very few of the photographs.