Photography on the Battlefield

On a recent trip to Maryland, my husband and I visited the national park at Antietam, the site of a ferocious one-day battle on September 17, 1862, in which 23,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing. We were fortunate to be there at the tail end of a week and a half series of lectures and living history events commemorating the 153^rd anniversary of the encounter. Our visit began with a fascinating overview of the role of the United States Sanitary Commission in improving the lives of the soldiers, especially at the front lines (we were surprised to learn that over two-thirds of the 622,000 men who lost their lives in the Civil War died from disease rather than from battle). Then, as we walked toward the Visitor Center, imagine my delight at stumbling upon a canvas tent offering the services of a photographer!

During the Civil War, field photographers like Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan employed mobile darkrooms transported by horse and wagon in an effort to document the preparation for and aftermath of the various battles. Because of the potential dangers of the situation and the technical difficulties of the wet-plate process, which required coating a glass plate with light-sensitive materials, making the exposure, and then developing it, all while in the field, scenes of the actual battles were virtually impossible to achieve. Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War, published in two volumes in 1866, was the best known visual representation of the Civil War and helped define how viewers came to understand both its significant moments and its tragic consequences.

Itinerant photographers also traveled to encampments, setting up tents that served as portrait studios. The primary process employed in this situation was the tintype, which is a unique photograph made on a thin sheet of dark, lacquered iron (tintype is a misnomer). The image is actually a negative, but looks like a positive because the photographic emulsion is applied to a black surface. Tintypes come is a variety of sizes, the most common being about 2 ½ by 3 ½ inches. While the iron sheet could be bent, they were less fragile than daguerreotypes (on metal but easily scratched) and ambrotypes (on glass plates). The metal support and small scale made the tintype the perfect process for soldier portraits since they could be easily slipped into an envelope and mailed home.

In the canvas tent at Antietam, John Mileker, a photographer and educator based in Baltimore, demonstrated the wet-plate process. He had several cameras available for visitors to look through as well, and this was of particular interest to a group of boy scouts that had gathered for the presentation. When we approached his worktable, Mileker was in the process of drying a recently exposed plate by moving it back and forth over a flame. He then applied a protective coating of varnish which he also dried using heat from a small oil lamp.

Mileker’s newly made tintypes are impressive in their clarity and detail. While their nineteenth-century counterparts may not be as pristine, like daguerreotypes and ambrotypes, the tintype’s predecessors, as unique objects they are important historical resources. The intimate portraits have outlived their subjects, passing from hand to hand over the decades to provide us with traces of ordinary individuals caught up in an extraordinary war. As Union soldier William P. Haberlin wrote in a poem accompanying his tintype portrait, “Now to the field again I’ll go, for the union to defend, until Jeff Davis is made to know, his kingdom is about to end. And now if I would not live, to hear f[r]eemen shout for joy, this miniature to you I give, in memory of a soldier boy.”