Photography and Its Roots
Invention of Photography In 1839 a French man by the name of Louis Jacques-Mande Daguerre invented the idea of photography and "taking a photo." Daguerre produced the first style of photography called daguerreotype. Daguerreotype is a technique requiring a metal plate and chemicals that coat the plate to produce an image. The process overall consists of a plate of copper with a thin coat of silver, which is then coated thickly with chemicals, to help produce a direct positive image on top of the plate. The silver coating overtop of the plate allowed for it to be reflective in certain sections. Because of this, many people referred to it as “the mirror with a memory.” Daguerre’s method quickly became published and popularized throughout Europe, eventually making its way to the United States.
Wet Collodion Process By the 1840s-1850s, Photography had begun to popularize and spread throughout the United States. Mathew Brady was one of the prominent, contemporary photographers rising in the U.S. After learning his skills for photography from Samuel B. Morse in 1839, Brady opened his own studio in New York City in 1844. Quickly after that, Brady's business grew due to the famous portraits he took of people such as Daniel Webster, Edgar Allen Poe, and more. While Brady was adapting to photography in the United States, a new technological advancement for photography was created in England. In 1851, an Englishmen by the name of Frederick Scott Archer invented a new form of photography called the wet collodion process. The wet plate process had a similar structure to the daguerreotype. Both were laborious and took a great amount of effort to produce an image. However, the wet plate allowed for a negative of an image to be generated onto the plate rather than a positive. This allowed for the image to look more realistic and required less time for the image to appear. Instead of waiting for up to a half hour for an image to appear, the processing took 4-5 seconds. Alexander Gardner became one of the first to perfect the wet plate process, adding onto his experience as a photographer. Gardner immigrated to the United States in 1856 as a well established photographer. Hired by the studio of Mathew Brady, Gardner introduced him to the new photography process and began photographing for his New York Studio.
Beginning of Photography in the Civil War By 1861, Photography had developed as a staple in the nation. Mathew Brady had opened up a second studio in Washington D.C., that was under the management of Alexander Gardner and his apprentice Timothy O'Sullivan. With the approach of the war, Brady and Gardner decided to create a complete photographic record of the war. Brady hired an additional 20 workers for both studios to head out and capture the war in photos. The photographers had to lug all of their equipment on a wagon to the battlefields, construct and deconstruct it all in the same day, and stay up late into the night trying to process the images onto metal plates. Brady and Gardner’s success in this project didn’t start progressing until a year into the war. By the fall of 1862, Gardner and O’Sullivan had made their way down to Sharpsburg, Maryland to witness and photograph what would become known as the bloodiest battle in American history, The Battle of Antietam.
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Daguerreotype Camera, Photo History.
Image depicting the Wet Collodion Process, Middlebury College.
Antietam Bridge, Alexander Gardner.
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Sources:
Library of Congress- “The Daguerreotype Medium”
John Ingledew and Lorentz Gullachsen - Photography (Laurence King Publishing)
American Battlefield Trust, “Bringing the Battlefront to the Homefront,” Photography and the Civil War, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/photography-and-civil-war
Encyclopaedia Britannica - "Wet Collodion Process"
National Park Service, “Mathew Brady”
John M. Harris, “Truthful as the Record of Heaven: The Battle of Antietam and the Birth of Photojournalism,” Southern Cultures: Remembering the Civil War Vol 19
Library of Congress- “The Daguerreotype Medium”
John Ingledew and Lorentz Gullachsen - Photography (Laurence King Publishing)
American Battlefield Trust, “Bringing the Battlefront to the Homefront,” Photography and the Civil War, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/photography-and-civil-war
Encyclopaedia Britannica - "Wet Collodion Process"
National Park Service, “Mathew Brady”
John M. Harris, “Truthful as the Record of Heaven: The Battle of Antietam and the Birth of Photojournalism,” Southern Cultures: Remembering the Civil War Vol 19