03517 - Sam A. Cooley; U.S. Photographer; Department of the South (LC-DIG-cwpb-03517)
During the Civil War photographers made a living in many ways. Many followed the army and made personal images to send home. Some had contracts from the army to produce records of the terrain and battle conditions. These would be used to learn from the war and help future officers understand the challenges faced and the decisions that were made.
Other photographers worked under contract for studios in Washington DC and New York. Mathew Brady was the best known of these studio owners and contracted many of the photographers of the day. Brady rarely gave credit to the individual photographer, instead marking his images that only gave credit to himself. While the number of photographers was probably in the hundreds if not thousands, the number of photographers remembered today is small. Besides Brady, Alexander Gardner, George Barnard, Timothy O’Sullivan and James Gibson are remembered for their photographs of the Union army. The South had few photographers since supplies became difficult and later impossible to obtain. George Cook did photograph much of the early war for the South, but most of the images were destroyed during a fire in 1864.
Photographs of the day were sold directly to the public as carte de viste’s (similar to a trading card about the size of a modern business card), stereo images, and individual prints. Many of the photographers working for news organizations of the day found their images transferred to wood cuts in order to be printed.
