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WAR PHOTOGRAPHY
WAR PHOTOGRAPHY
Introduction
The medium of photography was generally accepted as
a refl ection of reality in the nineteenth-century. In truth,
many photographic war scenes were manipulatively
staged. At times this was because the artist wanted to
refl ect what they had seen with their own eyes, but were
unable to capture with the camera. The creation of pho-
tographs was also incredibly arduous on the battlefi eld.
Lighting had to be ideal, photographic equipment was
cumbersome, and plates had to be processed quickly
necessitating portable darkrooms. In addition, the slow
development of the medium itself made it impossible
to produce action photographs.
Even with the assumed veracity of photographic
works, photographs were seldom printed in newspapers
in the nineteenth-century. More likely they were seen
when displayed in galleries, sold in books, or copied
by engravers for newspapers. However, often engravers
invented scenes of battle that had not been captured by
photographers. The development of half-tone printing,
which enabled the combining of text with photographs,
fueled a rise of photos in papers during the Spanish-
American War and Second Boer War at the end of the
century.
Early War Photography
The earliest photographs of wartime events come from
the end of the Mexican-American War (1836–1848).
These images are not of battle scenes, but rather
posed scenes of soldiers. “General Wool and Staff,
Calle Real, Saltillo, Mexico,” c. 1840, offers a good
example of the kind of choreographed scene frequently
produced. Wool’s regiment paused for several minutes
to accommodate the exposure time needed for the
daguerreotype; one can see that the fi gures on the left
are slightly blurred from having moved. The diffi cul-
ties of obtaining photographic materials, the lengthy
preparation time necessary, and the long exposure
period for the daguerreotype, made photography rare
in this period. Only around fi fty photographs survive,
and we have no record of specifi c photographers of the
Mexican-American War images.
The fi rst identifi able photographer who took pictures
in a wartime environment was John McCosh. McCosh
served as a British surgeon during the Second Sikh War
(1848–1849) in India and the Second Burma War (1852).
Using the calotype, McCosh photographed fellow
soldiers, artillery, and ruins. Karl Baptist von Szatmari
also exhibited some photographs of a battle between the
Russian Army and the Turks in the Paris Exhibition of
1855; an engraving after one of these scenes survives,
as do some of the photographs themselves.1850s
Richard Nicklin had been hired by the British military
to photograph government-sanctioned scenes of the
Crimean War (1853–1856), but the photographer and his
two assistants were caught in a hurricane and drowned
Wood and Gibson. Inspection
of Troops at Cumberlanding,
Pamunkey, Virginia.
The J. Paul Getty Museum,
Los Angeles © The J. Paul
Getty Museum.