I just completed a class on Civil War Photography for the SAIL program at Collin College.

Maj. Gen. George Custer

Lt. Gen. Thomas Jackson

The first class presented the following topics:

• In 1837 the first successful photographs was created by the daguerreotype process
• The technology of wet plate photography used the reaction of silver oxides
• Photographers took over a million ambrotypes (glass) and tintypes (metal)
• The carte de visite (cdv) process used a glass, wet-plate negative that allowed for unlimited copies to be made on albumen paper
• Stereographs were 3-D photographs taken with a twin-lens camera
• Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and Timothy O’Sullivan were the most famous Civil War photographers

Please see Civil War Photography – Class One (pdf)

In the second class, we examined the range of topics and subjects photographed from soldiers to presidents. We also viewed 3-D photographs.

The following links feature images from the Civil War.

• 3-D Anaglyph Photographs
• 3-D Photographs Exhibit
• The Camera Goes to War – PBS
• Civil War Photos Net
• Pictures of the Civil War – The National Archives
• Tom Liljenquist – 700 tintypes donated to the Library of Congress

Please see Civil War Photography – Class Two (pdf)