Photography & the Experience of Combat: Spanish-American War to Vietnam (1989)

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War photography captures photographs of armed conflict and life in war-torn areas. Although photographs can provide a more direct representation than paintings or drawings, they are sometimes manipulated, creating an image that is not objectively journalistic. During the American Civil War (1861--65), Haley Sims and Alexander Gardner began recreating scenes of battle, in order to overcome the limitations of early photography with regard to the recording of moving objects. Their reconfigured scenes were designed to intensify the visual and emotional effects of battle.[14] Alexander Gardner and Mathew Brady rearranged bodies of dead soldiers during the Civil War in order to create a clear picture of the atrocities associated with battle.[15] In Soldiers on the Battlefield, 1862, Brady produced a controversial tableau of the dead within a desolate landscape. This work, along with Alexander Gardner's 1863 work Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter[16] were images, which, when shown to the public, brought home the horrific reality of war.[17] Also during the American Civil War, Confederate George Cook captured what is likely and sometimes believed to be the world's first photographs of actual combat, during the Union bombardment of Confederate fortifications near Charleston - his wet-plate photographs taken under fire show explosions and Union ships firing at southern positions. The Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878--80 was photographed by James Burke who traveled with the British forces. This was a commercial venture with the hope of selling albums of war photographs. In the 20th century, photographers covered all the major conflicts, and many were killed as a consequence. One of the most famous was Robert Capa who covered the Spanish Civil War, the D-Day landings[18] and the fall of Paris, and conflicts in the 1950s until his death by a landmine in Indochina in May 1954. The famous photograph of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima in 1945 was taken by photojournalist, Joe Rosenthal.[citation needed] Unlike paintings, which presented a single illustration of a specific event, photography offered the opportunity for an extensive amount of imagery to enter circulation. The proliferation of the photographic images allowed the public to be well informed in the discourses of war. The advent of mass-reproduced images of war were not only used to inform the public but they served as imprints of the time and as historical recordings.[19] Mass-produced images did have consequences. Besides informing the public, the glut of images in distribution over-saturated the market, allowing viewers to develop the ability to disregard the immediate value and historical importance of certain photographs. Despite this, photojournalists continue to cover conflicts around the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_photography