114
After his death his negatives were acquired by Un-
derwood & Underwood.
John Hannavy
BARNARD, EDWARD EMERSON
(1857–1923)
American astronomer, celestial photography
pioneer, and a prolifi c writer and publisher of over
nine hundred scientifi c papers
Barnard only received two months schooling in his early
years, as his mother taught him from home. His father
died before he was born, so at the age of nine, he started
work in a photography gallery. He was put in charge of
a solar enlarger, which was used to track the sun and
make photographic prints. Barnard went on to privately
study, photograph and discover comets, nebulae and
planets. His photographic atlas of the Milky Way is of
such accurate detail and quality, that it is still used to
date. His drive to discover new comets was rewarded
by a wealthy patron of astronomy, Mr H.H.Warner, who
rewarded each comet’s discovery with $200. In 1883
he received a Fellowship to Vanderbilt and graduated
in Mathematics in 1887. From 1887–1895 he worked
as an astronomer at Lick Observatory in California. In
1892 he discovered the fi rst comet photographically
and discovered the fi fth moon of Jupiter, Amalthea. As
the fi rst four moons had been discovered by Galileo in
1610, and none since, this catapulted him into being
an astronomy celebrity. From 1895 onwards he was
a Professor of Practical Astronomy at Chicago’s Uni-
versity and an astronomer at Yerkes Observatory. His
work received distinguished recognition by the Royal
Astronomical Society in Great Britain and a Gold Medal
in 1897. He was also recognised by the Academy of
Sciences in France.
Jo HallingtonBARNARD, GEORGE N. (1819–1902)
Born in Connecticut, American photographer George
N. Barnard is best known for his views of the Ameri-
can Civil War, published in Alexander Gardner’s
Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook of the War (1866),
in Barnard’s own Photographic Views of Sherman’s
Campaign (1866), and widely-circulated in engraved
form in Harper’s Weekly. Barnard’s photographs are an
indispensable chronicle of the destruction wrecked and
losses suffered in the Civil War.
Barnard appears to have made his fi rst photographs
around 1842. The following year, at the age of twenty-
four, he opened a daguerreotype studio in Oswego, New
York. Among Barnard’s earliest surviving works are two
views of a fi re at the Ames Mills in Oswego (“Burning
Mills at Oswego, NY,” 5 July 1853). They stand as re-
markably early examples of daguerreotype reportage.
In the same year, Barnard became secretary of the New
York Daguerrean Association. After purchasing Clark’s
Gallery in Syracuse, he began making ambrotypes. At
some point in the late 1850s, he studied and adopted the
wet-collodion negative process, then rapidly increasing
in popularity.
In the years before the American Civil War, BarnardBARKER, GEORGE
Barnard, George. Ruins in
Columbia, S.C. No 2.
The J. Paul Getty Museum,
Los Angeles © The J. Paul
Getty Museum.