The American Civil war was one of the first wars covered by Photography in the 19th Century. Photography was still a very new medium for recording things so advances had only got to 'wet plate' this was a very slow process and demanded patience. The equipment needed was very large and heavy so getting everything into the battlefield was an large-scale operation in its self. as you can see from the picture below, it was far from a one-man job. Each shot on the wet plate's took quite a long time to prepare. The Wagon in the photograph is actually the Darkroom. This was needed to be kept close by for the process to be done as quickly as possible.
For the first time, photos of war could be seen as almost real life rather than paintings. This showed people on the home front the true violence of the war, rather thank the usual paintings that were artist's impressions.
"A harvest of death", a famous scene from the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania, in July of 1863(Timothy H. O'Sullivan/LOC)
Confederate dead lie among rifles and other gear, behind a stone wall at the foot of Marye's Heights near Fredericksburg, Virginia on May 3, 1863. Union forces penetrated the Confederate lines at this point, during the Second Battle of Fredericksburg.(Mathew Brady/NARA)
African Americans collect the remains of soldiers killed in battle near Cold Harbor, Virginia, in April of 1865. (LOC)
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