When previously I'd thought of Civil War photography, the images that had come to mind were ambrotype portraits of soldiers in uniform and battlefield scenes shot by Mathew B. Brady. (Actually, Brady only saw action early on at the First Battle of Bull Run. After that, he employed assistants to photograph close to the action, though this may have been due to his own failing eyesight.)
A great part of the current exhibit at the Met, Photography and the American Civil War, is in fact given over to the work of Brady's assistants, many of whom were exceptional photographers in their own right. Prominent among these were Timothy O'Sullivan, George N. Barnard and Alexander Gardner. The presence at the exhibit of Brady's own cumbersome view camera provides some idea of the difficulties these photographers faced working in the field. The use of collodion wet plate glass negatives necessitated the use of traveling darkrooms and resulted in very slow exposures.
There are other photographs on display that are unexpected, such as A.J. Riddle's photo of Andersonville Prison and J.W. Jones's shot of an emaciated soldier liberated from that same prison. These focus attention on horrors of war that are less commonly considered. And there are photographs of Afro-Americans, newly liberated from their Southern slavemasters but not quite yet emancipated. In the early days of the war, Afro-Americans were not allowed to enlist as soldiers and in some photos they are shown as the servants of their white liberators.
The exhibit, which runs through September 2, 2013, is an engrossing experience that reveals a handful of photographers striving to use a new medium to document death and destruction on a hitherto unimaginable scale with greater immediacy than ever before.
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