Civil War Witness by Don Nardo

Author:Don Nardo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 9780756546939, 9780756546991, 9780756546977, Mathew Brady, Civil War photography, American history, Civil War, Alexander Gardner
Publisher: Capstone
Published: 2014-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Brady photographed the battered trees atop Culp’s Hill.

Another battlefield scene captured in multiple images was of a wheat field near a large stand of trees known as McPherson’s Woods. Somewhere in the woods on the battle’s first day a Confederate sharpshooter had killed Union General John F. Reynolds. A very popular military leader, Reynolds was widely seen by northerners as one of the best, if not the best, general the Union had. So the public had a strong interest in seeing where he fell. In one of the shots, McPherson’s Woods looms in the distance at the upper right. In the field in the foreground are two men. The one on the left points out the woods to the other, who is none other than Brady himself, wearing his signature straw hat.

In fact, the famous photographer appears in at least six of the photos his cameramen took at Gettysburg. One reason seems to have been Brady’s interest in providing perspective. His expert eye told him that the absence of the dead bodies that had dominated most of Gardner’s images presented a possible problem. Without corpses, or perhaps a horse or a house, Brady evidently thought, the size of objects and the distances in some of the pastoral panoramas would not be readily apparent to the city folk who were most of his customers.

To add a familiar object for comparison, therefore, Brady inserted himself into some of the shots. An especially striking example is another of the photos of McPherson’s Woods. At first it appears to be a charming scene showing the photographer standing beside a rail fence bordering a small stream. He stares away from the camera across a deserted field toward the woods. There, it was thought, General Reynolds had been killed.

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