presence. Even in half-length, his gesture and expression create a
mood that seems to reveal much about him. Perhaps Delacroix re-
sponded to Nadar’s famous gift for putting his clients at ease by as-
suming the pose that best expressed his personality. The new photo-
graphic materials made possible the rich range of tones in Nadar’s
images.JULIA MARGARET CAMERONAmong the most famous
portrait photographers in 19th-century England was Julia Margaret
Cameron(1815–1879), who did not take up photography seriously
until age 48. Although she produced images of many well-known
men of the period, including Charles Darwin, Alfred Tennyson,
and Thomas Carlyle, she photographed more women than men, as
was true of many women photographers.Ophelia, Study No. 2
(FIG. 30-52) typifies her portrait style. Cameron often depicted her
female subjects as characters in literary or biblical narratives. The
slightly blurred focus also became a distinctive feature of her work—
the byproduct of photographing with a lens having a short focal
length, which allowed only a small area of sharp focus. The blurri-
ness adds an ethereal, dreamlike tone to the photographs, appropri-
ate for Cameron’s fictional “characters.” Her photograph of Ophelia
has a mysterious, fragile quality reminiscent of Pre-Raphaelite
paintings (FIG. 30-43) of literary heroines.TIMOTHY O’SULLIVANPhotographers were quick to real-
ize the documentary power of their new medium. Thus began the
story of photography’s influence on modern life and of the immense
changes it brought to communication and information manage-
ment. Historical events could be recorded in permanent form on the
spot for the first time. The photographs taken of the Crimean War
(1856) by Roger Fenton (1819–1869) and of the American Civil War
by Mathew B. Brady (1823–1896), Alexander Gardner (1821–1882),
and Timothy O’Sullivan(1840–1882) remain unsurpassed as inci-
sive accounts of military life, unsparing in their truthful detail and
poignant as expressions of human experience.
Of the Civil War photographs, the most moving are the inhu-
manly objective records of combat deaths. Perhaps the most repro-
duced of these photographs is O’Sullivan’s A Harvest of Death, Get-
tysburg, Pennsylvania, July 1863 (FIG. 30-53). Although viewers30-52Julia Margaret Cameron,Ophelia, Study No. 2,1867.
Albumen print, 1 1 102 – 3 . George Eastman House, Rochester
(gift of Eastman Kodak Company; formerly Gabriel Cromer Collection).
Cameron was a prominent 19th-century photographer who often de-
picted her female subjects as characters in literary or biblical narratives.
The slightly blurred focus is a distinctive feature of her work.30-53Timothy O’Sullivan,
A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, July 1863,1863.
Negative by Timothy O’Sullivan.
Albumen print by Alexander
Gardner, 63 – 4 83 – 4 .New York
Public Library (Astor, Lenox
and Tilden Foundations, Rare
Books and Manuscript
Division), New York.
Wet-plate technology enabled
photographers to record
historical events on the spot—
and to comment on the high
price of war, as in this photo-
graph of dead Union soldiers
at Gettysburg in 1863.Photography 817and character and enables you to produce... a really convincing and
sympathetic likeness, an intimate portrait.”^15
Nadar’s Eugène Delacroix (FIG. 30-1) shows the painter at the
height of his career. In this photograph, the artist imparts remarkable1 in.
1 in.