Civil War Pictures – analysis
You’ll be surprised at the rate of medical pictures you will find. People are suddenly identified by the wounds inflicted upon them on duty for the state. But this can be easily explained by the Equipment the photographers had to bring along:
Equipment:
à Brady and his camp considered the only reliable source of information
à battle of Bull Run: unclear whether Brady actually photographed the battlefield, in the first battle, Brady had to be saved as he was almost killed
“Brady’s precarious escape also brought home to photographers the dangers of covering the battlefield, especially with the clumsy array of equipment required by the wet-plate process. Brady had outfitted himself with two wagons of cameras and chemicals – the process required that the camera be planted, the lens focused, the plate coated, exposed, and developed while still wet, all within precious moments at the scene of the ‘view’ to be made. They show preparations and aftermath, the scene but not the event.” (72)
Photographs and scenes
Thus, artificial scenes, that seem to go back to methods of painting in composition and posture prevail.
“[…] the photographs pose a double question of comprehension: how were they understood at the time, and how should they be understood today?” (72f)
“But it is noteworthy that Civil War photographers frequently resorted to stagecraft, arranging scenes of daily life in camp to convey a look of informality, posing groups of soldiers on picket duty – perhaps moving corpses into more advantageous positions for dramatic close-ups of littered battlefields.” (73)
“We see the war not as heroic action in a grand style but as rotting corpses, shattered trees and rocks, weary soldiers in mud-covered uniforms or lying wounded in field hospitals – as boredom and pain.” (74)
à also medical cases, injuries and corpses were shown to a vast degree. Does this suffice to help the viewer comprehend the ways of wars? Could one photo tell all of the stories and positions involved?
à death of generals used to find their ways into newspapers to draw a line under a certain battle, now average soldiers were documented as well
“Operating on the scene, without opportunity for advance planning or for retrospective decisions about pictures already taken, and without the means to idealize persons and actions, photographers in the Civil War focused on the mundane, on camp life, on drills and picket lines and artery batteries.” (75)
à less mythic, fictional through depiction of everyday life, so indeed more real
à warfare has become more commercialized, institutionalized and organized ever since Napoleons wars
BUT “How can one experience the chaos of war and describe it rationally at the same time? How was it possible to see photographically, in single, segmented images, and to see politically or historically, as it were, with an eye to the meaning of the transcribed scenes, their meaning within a war itself so difficult to see intelligibly?” (75)
