A House Divided: Photography and the Civil War
A house divided against itself cannot stand
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free
– Abraham Lincoln, 1858
Col. John Blackburne Woodward (seated right), Maj. Joseph B. Leggett (seated left), and Lt. Col. William A. McKee (standing) of the 13th National Guard Regiment, New York, ca. 1863
Mathew Brady, General Robert E. Lee, Richmond, Virginia, 1865
Mathew Brady, Col. D'Utassy & Staff of the Garibaldi Guard, 1861
Anthony Berger, Abraham Lincoln with son Tad, February 9, 1864
Fort Marion, Interior, looking East, showing Parapet Wall, Sentry Box, and Heavy Ordnance. Saint Augustine, Florida, ca. 1860
Brady Studio (attributed to), Seated soldier in the 56th New York Infantry, also known as the Tenth Legion, 1861-65
Brady Studio (attributed to), Officer in the 7th New York State Militia (the “Gallant Seventh”), ca. 1860
Andrew Joseph Russell (attributed to), Fifteen-inch Rodman Gun, Battery Rodgers, Potomac River, Near Washington, D.C., 1863-1865
Timothy O’Sullivan (attributed to), Signal Tower at Point of Rocks, Appomattox River, Bermuda Hundred, Virginia, 1864
At a time when our nation appears to be coming apart at the seams, it can be sobering to revisit the Civil War (1861-65), America’s bloodiest internal conflict, in which 620,000 young men lost their lives fighting brother against brother.
While the Civil War was not the first conflict recorded by the camera, it was by far the most extensive photographic effort to date, with some 300 itinerant photographers covering every theater of war, and every portrait studio memorializing the new recruits in their fresh uniforms. Photography was only 22 years old when the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, but photomechanical advances already made it possible to reproduce these images in the nation’s newspapers and magazines. In this respect, modern photojournalism was born in the Civil War.
This exhibition comprises more than 100 rare original photographic prints and cased images documenting numerous important aspects of the Civil War, seen through the lens of the most gifted artist-photographers of 19th century America.
Number of photographs: More than 100
Rental fee: $16,500 for eight weeks plus shipping and insurance. Additional weeks are available for 10 percent per week.