Historical Photographer

George N. Barnard

George N. Barnard was born in 1819 in Coventry, Connecticut. He opened his first daguerreotype studio in Oswego, New York, in 1847 and in 1859 Barnard joined Edward Anthony's firm in New York City as a stereoscopic photographer (which were the first mass-produced form of entertainment photography). He was employed by Matthew Brady later on in his life as a news photographer. When the American civil war, the Brady photography studio gained a lot of business by soldiers who wanted to get pictures taken with them in their uniform, so Barnard was sent to Virginia to take pictures while Brady kept taking credit for all the pictures. Since the equipment was so large, he couldn't actually take battle scenes, so instead he would take pictures of the ruins of war and other important elements such as bridges, buildings and train tracks. In 1863, Barnard got fed up with the lack of credit and he quit working for Brady. Later in his life, Barnard started working out a studio in Chicago which was later destroyed by the historic fire of 1871. Barnard died on February 4, 1902, in Syracuse, New York.




This set of photos, burning mills, emphasizes the ability for daguerreotypes to capture spontaneous occurrences, such as fires. His photograph of the burning mill is the first of it's kind. His photography is important because it was a form of glamorizing the war from posing, critiquing the war by showing the ruins of battlefields, and also showing the spontaneity of life by photographing natural disasters. Since he did his work at a point in history when the technology of photography was not that advanced, all his work is black and white and grainy-looking. They capture a period in time which seems light-years away, and visualizes the essence of that period in time