What Cameras Were Used In The Civil War

Same Camera, Unlike Century: Capturing Civil War Sites, 150 Years Later on

Todd Harrington holds a adult wet plate up to the low-cal to check its exposure.

Claire O'Neill/NPR
The wet-plate camera used past Alexander Gardner after the Battle of Antietam was similar this one: Information technology had ii lenses, which created a "stereo" paradigm, or 2 identical images side past side on one plate.

Claire O'Neill/NPR
Hither's what yous see when you go under that fiddling blackness cloth. Naturally, the view is in color — though at kickoff it'southward a bit surprising. You tin can see how the photographic camera's twin lenses project two identical images. Merely it takes some getting used to: The images on the focus plate are upside down and backward.

Claire O'Neill/NPR
To work like Gardner did in the field, the lensman needs a portable darkroom. The interior of Todd Harrington'southward is like an alchemist'south laboratory.

Claire O'Neill/NPR

Believe it or not, there's a lot of food involved in wet-plate photography. Egg whites (albumen) are used to make the glass plates adhesive to the calorie-free-sensitive chemicals. And one style to keep the plates from drying out later on processing is to glaze them in honey. It'southward also physically demanding, so you lot become really hungry.

Hither'due south a snapshot from the field as Harrington composed his paradigm of Burnside Bridge — which involved schlepping the huge, fragile camera down a steep incline to become the right perspective. Claire O'Neill (@clairevoyant)/Instagram hide caption

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Claire O'Neill (@clairevoyant)/Instagram

Here's a snapshot from the field as Harrington composed his image of Burnside Bridge — which involved schlepping the huge, fragile camera down a steep incline to go the right perspective.

Claire O'Neill (@clairevoyant)/Instagram

These are the things I learned in the field with wet-plate photographer Todd Harrington. For the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, we asked him to retrace the steps of Ceremonious State of war lensman Alexander Gardner. We wanted to capture the aforementioned scenes with the same equipment — to run across how things take changed. (Kind of similar the nerd's version of Beloved Photograph.)

Turns out, not much has inverse. The land surrounding that historic boxing site has been beautifully preserved. We arrived early one morning this month every bit the park staff was pitching tents in preparation of the ceremony festivities. But at some of the peripheral sites where Gardner photographed, a serene serenity vicious over the healed mural.

Of course, there are traces of modernity — like telephone lines, paved roads and Porta-Potties. Merely the main difference between Gardner's original images and the ones re-created past Harrington is the one thing that made Gardner'due south and so memorable: the bodies of fallen soldiers.

One reason nosotros were so interested in this particular prepare of images — that is, the ones Gardner took at Antietam — is because in his mean solar day, those images were groundbreaking. Upward to that time, war photography tended to portray a rosy motion picture of war, like heroic soldiers posing for portraits after battle.

The twenty-four hours of fighting at Antietam remains the bloodiest in American armed forces history. And for the first fourth dimension, Gardner turned the lens on the dead soldiers pending burial. The photos were displayed in New York City about a month after the boxing. Every bit Harrington told me: "It was consternation. No one had e'er seen anything like that. Information technology horrified the public."

Harrington compares his exposure to the original, to see if they line upwardly correctly. Claire O'Neill/(@clairevoyant)/Instagram hide caption

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Claire O'Neill/(@clairevoyant)/Instagram

We also wanted to gain a better appreciation of what Gardner's work entailed. And let me just say: It'south crazy difficult. (Meanwhile, I was documenting the whole process on Instagram, and don't fifty-fifty know how to begin reconciling that.)

"It was quite a herculean effort to become up hither carrying all your encumbrances," Harrington explained. But to become to Antietam, Gardner would accept packed up all of his equipment, fragile plates and chemicals — plus enough nutrient — into his carriage. He would have fabricated the 70-mile commute from Washington, D.C., along bumpy, unpaved roads, with the threat of Confederate cavalry along the way.

Once at the site, he had to figure out a strategic place to prepare upward his portable darkroom — and and then lug his heavy camera around the hilly terrain where bodies had already been sitting out in the sun for days, if you tin can imagine the smell.

In that location are more than a dozen steps involved in each exposure — and, therefore, about a dozen variables that could go wrong. It took Harrington a full day's piece of work to become 6 successful images — a relatively productive 24-hour interval. Granted, his task entailed the additional obstacle of finding the verbal spot where Gardner stood, and the verbal camera angle, which was no piece of cake feat.

"It seems very, very hard to work in that kind of environment. But he did — and he did fabulous at it," Harrington ended at the terminate of the twenty-four hours.

"Again, y'all're making your film every time; you're carefully composing; there are so many things that could go wrong," he says. "Nosotros're only pleased he was as accomplished as he was to requite us a legacy to written report."

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2012/09/17/161266475/same-camera-different-century-capturing-civil-war-sites-150-years-later

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