How Photography Feeds Our Fascination With the Civil War

It is believed that the first war-related photographs were taken in 1847 by an anonymous photographer during the Mexican–American War, of which we “Remember the Alamo” and little else. But when we think of the American Civil War, especially in this sesquicentennial year, we quite vividly picture the war thanks to the army of photographers that captured that conflict through the still-young medium and brought it back to the home front. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition, Photography and the American Civil War, studies how the “War Between the States” lives on as a dialogue between the modern viewer and century-and-a-half-old images as raw and fresh as pictures of contemporary wars beamed into our homes today. Of all the aspects of memory that feed our fascination with the Civil War, photography provides the single element that continually leaves us hungry for more. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Photography Feeds Our Fascination With the Civil War."

[Image: Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, born Ireland, 1840-1882). Alexander Gardner (American, Glasgow, Scotland 1821-1882 Washington, D.C.). Field Where General Reynolds Fell, Gettysburg, 1863. Albumen silver print from glass negative. Preceding page in the album with printed title and caption. Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005. 2005.100.502.1 (37). Image: ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.]  
[Many thanks to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for providing me with the image above and other press materials related to Photography and the American Civil War, which runs through September 2, 2013.]

Long Exposure: Looking Back on the Civil War in Photographs

It’s not easy to imagine today in our world of high-speed photography and camera phones what it was like to have your photograph taken in the 19^th century. The still very new technology required sitters to remain motionless for long periods—sometimes several minutes—for the image to be captured by the plate. Any movement would blur the image. This year marks the sesquicentennial of the beginning in April 1861 of the American Civil War, the first American armed conflict to be caught on camera. A new exhibition of Civil War photos at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, opens up a family album of sorts to show us the forgotten figures of that conflict—the everyday people unheralded by history books, but who look much more like us today than the larger-than-life leaders we all know by name. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Long Exposure."

Picturing War

The Art Newspaper interviews the official Iraq war artist of the United Kingdom, Steve McQueen (no relation to the actor) in their latest issue. McQueen, winner of the Turner Prize in 1999, wants to honor the war dead of the UK by placing portraits of individual fallen soldiers on postage stamps. “I didn’t want to make an object that was gathering dust in a museum, somewhere that hardly anyone knew about,” McQueen says. The initial application for the stamps has been rejected by the Royal Mail, but McQueen hopes that the 5-year waiting period will be waived (as had been done for a victorious English cricket team in 2005) and his work will made available to the public.

The documentation of war by art is always a difficult proposition. England chose John Singer Sargent to document their involvement in World War I. Sargent’s Gassed (above) remains the finest painted image of modern warfare for me. Troops blinded by mustard gas lean on one another as they march forward in this almost frieze-like image. Unfortunately, Sargent’s depiction met with some displeasure for displaying the cost and, perhaps, the visionless madness of armed conflict.

I do not know if the United States has chosen an artist to depict American involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it’s hard to imagine something like that happening in the current cultural climate. American artists’ depictions of war usually tend towards portraits of generals. The only true American war artist that I can conjure up is Mathew Brady, whose photography of the American Civil War remains the definitive portrayal most Americans have of that conflict. Brady’s photo of fallen soldiers at the Battle of Gettysburg (above) poignantly captures the tragic drama of war. Some have accused Brady of posing some of the dead to create more dramatic images, as if that were some kind of cheating, somehow making death in battle more dramatic or even beautiful than it is in reality, propagating what Wilfred Owen called “the great lie” that “it is sweet and right to die for one’s country” in the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est.”

I don’t see Brady’s artistic license (assuming he exercised it) or Sargent’s classical allusion as glossing over the senseless reality of war as much as infusing it with meaning. Their images serve those who remain more than the fallen, reminding us of a great cost and why that cost should never be paid again. Any artistic license that engages the viewer should be welcomed. These are not propaganda glorifying war but testimonies to its inglorious consequences. We can only hope that McQueen gets the opportunity to present those consequences to the British public each time they receive or mail a letter.