This photo of a Confederate sharpshooter killed at Gettysburg is one of the best-known images of the Civil War, although it was later proven to have been staged. Though Mathew Brady sent his photographers to chronicle the war, the technical requirements of glass-plate negatives made combat photography extremely difficult. Instead, photographers documented troops before engagements, or the aftermath of battles.
Reproduction from original glass plate negative. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
Photograph, “Battle-field at Gettysburg…,” by Timothy O'Sullivan, July 1863
Photographing the Civil War
Mathew Brady’s Civil War photographs at the Library of Congress constitute one of the most significant historical resources of the period. Brady, a New York portrait photographer, opened a studio in Washington, D.C., in 1858. Throughout the war, Brady’s staff photographed soldiers, battlefields, and related incidents on glass-plate negatives. The images, sold as prints, reproduced in books, and converted to illustrations for newspapers, were the first to document an American war. Congress acquired the collection between 1875 and 1954 to preserve this visual history for future generations.
This photo of a Confederate sharpshooter killed at Gettysburg is one of the best-known images of the Civil War, although it was later proven to have been staged. Though Mathew Brady sent his photographers to chronicle the war, the technical requirements of glass-plate negatives made combat photography extremely difficult. Instead, photographers documented troops before engagements, or the aftermath of battles.
Reproduction from original glass plate negative. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
