"Combat" photography pioneers

[flamethrowerguy]

I remember reading about the US Civil War being the “first photographed armed conflict” in history. Indeed there a lot of interesting, dramatic and also shocking pictures around.
I’m going to start this thread with two that burned into my memory:

Antietam/MD, 1862: Fallen CSA soldier next to a Federal officer’s grave.

The Battle of Fredericksburg, December 1862. Confederate casualties, rifles and gear at the stone wall below Marye’s Heights after the fightings.

One request in advance , please don’t mass-upload photos, leave time and space for possible discussions.

[navyson]

I’ve never seen the top picture until now. The bottom picture always caught my attention also. If I remember correctly, they stood 3-4 men deep and fired while others reloaded, to have a mass effect on the advancing Union soldiers. I always wondered if the rifles were staged though, seeing as how valuable they were to the rebels.

[rudeerude]

I am not real keen on Civil War battles but I do have one thick Civil War book full of photo’s.I will scan some as time goes by.

[Nickdfresh]

Gettysburg:

The site linked states that the below was a Confederate soldier blasted apart by a Union shell (most likely).

Bodies bloating in the hot, July sun of southern Pennsylvania.

One of the most famous Civil War photos in the States. The dead again festering in July 1863.

[rudeerude]

A heap of amputations await burial.Odd thing is only the foot with the shattered bones looks to be the worst.The others don’t look all that bad.“I believe the doctors kills more than they cure,” an Alabama private said.

[Rising_Sun]

@rudeerude

A heap of amputations await burial.Odd thing is only the foot with the shattered bones looks to be the worst.The others don’t look all that bad.“I believe the doctors kills more than they cure,” an Alabama private said.

We don’t know how long after amputation the photo was taken, but the upturned feet with black soles under the lower leg across the top of the picture could well be gangrenous. And amputation was about the only remedy for gangrene then.

[Procyon]

That’s quite a picture the last one…

[VonWeyer]

Does anyone know if dramatic photos like the above were released to the public in their day, or did they only surface years later?

[Neutral]

Since this is a site and forum based on combat photography I thought it would be nice to have a thread dedicated to the photographers and the history of combat photography, hope you like the idea (if there is already a thread dealing with the same subject please feel free to delete this one and accept my apologies). So here it goes:

The Beggining

The first modern war correspondent to make public impact was the “The Times” correspondent in the Crimean War, William Howard Russell:

In his 1854 account of the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava he wrote in Victorian prose, ‘They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and glory of war’. The end of his despatch abandons poetry and gives the exact count of men and beasts in the charge: ‘Our loss, as far as it could be ascertained in killed, wounded and missing, at two o’clock today, was as follows: -Went into action 607, Returned from action 198, Loss 409.’

In his footsteps followed the first “war photographer”, Roger Fenton who took with him his mobile darkroom to Crimea, he could develop negatives within 10 minutes.

The problem was that Fenton’s process of actually taking the pictures was so laborious that most of his portfolio from the Crimea is of landscapes and groups of men and civilians away from the combat itself. Nonetheless he gave his viewers an astonishing sense of immediacy, of being at the scene of action.

Adapted from “The Hulton Getty Picture Collection: Camera in Conflict”

If other members like the idea I will continue in the next few days, and feel free to contribute.

Cheers,

Neutral

[Rising_Sun]

Good topic.

Could I suggest that it be widened to ‘War photography’ rather just ‘Combat photography’ as some of the most compelling images aren’t combat images but the consequences of combat and other warlike activities?

There are some images from the Mexican-American war of 1846-48 which pre-date the Crimea. http://www.theslideprojector.com/photo1/photo1summer/photo1lecture4.html

When one considers the damage cannon balls of the Crimean era could do as they swept through advancing forces, Fenton’s image in the link above of the numerous spent cannon balls in the Valley of the Shadow of Death is frightening in its own way without one human figure in it.

[Nickdfresh]

Agree that it’s a good thread topic. I’ve decided to fold an existing thread started by FTG in the Civil War forum into this one…

[Nickdfresh]

@VonWeyer

Does anyone know if dramatic photos like the above were released to the public in their day, or did they only surface years later?

I’m 100% positive, but I believe the photos were available to the public in a limited form such as in books and perhaps a few more avant-garde newspapers as there was probably little in the way of military censorship. There was probably no way to mass distribute the photos as I doubt the more gruesome ones were widely published by the press…

[Nickdfresh]

From the U.S.-Mexican War site The Mexican War - a brigade of well dressed New Hampshire Militiamen in 1846:

[Rising_Sun]

@Nickdfresh

Bodies bloating in the hot, July sun of southern Pennsylvania.

One of the most famous Civil War photos in the States. The dead again festering in July 1863.

I’ve seen that photo many times, but for the first time I have noticed that all of the readily visible bodies are lying on their backs, which is not the likely result of random battle deaths.

Given the papers lying around, I’d guess that it was the usual post-battle turning out of bodies for papers and anything else of intelligence value, or just looting the dead, or a combination of all of the above.

It reminds me of an Australian solder who’d served in hard places in New Guinea who said to me that one of the worst things was the turning over of the dead and the scattering of papers after the battle, with papers and photos which showed that the dead enemy were just the same as us in their own way with families etc.

[Nickdfresh]

One of the things I recall from Ken Burns excellent PBS documentary, is that men in this period shot by large caliber (.60 cal.?) would often tear through and ruffle their clothing while dying as the result of horror from suffering such large wounds and in an attempt to extract the ball…

[Truce]

The dead were often arranged or posed by photographers. As a result some photos don’t accurately depict how soldiers fell or died, it’s something to keep in mind while looking through civil war pics.