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The photographs produced by Mathew Brady’s studio are
the best known and most reproduced images of the Civil War.
But, there is another Civil War photographer who remains almost
unrecognized and all but forgotten.
Originally from New Hampshire, Andrew J. Russell was raised
in New York where his family worked in canal and railroad construction.
Andrew became a painter and began taking photographs to use
in lieu of sketches to create his paintings. It wasn’t
long before he replaced his career as a painter with that of
a photographer.
At age 32 in 1862, Russell enlisted in the Union Army as a
captain in the 141st New York Volunteers. Because of his familiarity
with bridges and his art and photography background, Russell
was assigned to Army Engineer General Herman Haupt's U.S. Military
Railroad Construction Corps. There his task was to create a
photographic record of Haupt’s construction projects.
During his lifetime, Russell’s photographs were praised
as documenting modern technology and many considered them works
of art. Where Brady’s field photographs were taken after
major battles and often were staged, Russell was where the action
was. He photographed the fresh battle sites of Fredericksburg
and Petersburg; burial scenes as they occurred; and shortly
after Appomattox, Russell captured the haunted sight of a burning
Richmond, somber views that Americans still contemplate.
After the war, both Mathew Brady and Andrew Russell realized
that the same photographs that brought the Civil War to the
people now were rejected. No one wanted reminders of those terrible
years. It was obvious that there no longer was a market for
cartes de visite to exchange with loved ones in the field of
battle, or for photographic reprints of their bodies as they
lay there. As a result, Brady-- whose failing eyesight forced
him to abandon photography, and as his wife was dying--went
bankrupt.
The post-war years for Russell proved just the opposite. Russell
hired on as a photographer for Leslie’s Illustrated and
for the Union Pacific Railroad. During several stints out west,
he brought along one stereo and one 30-pound view camera, lenses,
tents used for darkrooms, dozens of 10x13 and 4x8 glass plates,
and dozens of bottles of chemicals used to process the plates.
He housed these things in a covered wagon that he guided up
the hills and down the gullies--wherever the construction crews
led him. It was Russell who took the famous photograph of the
joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at
Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869.
At about the same time that Brady’s collection of negatives
was sold for greenhouse glass, Russell sold his negatives to
an individual named O. C. Smith. Smith erased Russell's name
from this work, and almost from American memory, by crediting
himself instead of Russell for the photos. Brady's collection,
on the other hand, eventually was rescued and deposited with
the Library of Congress, where today it lives on-line and available
to the world. Although Russell had a successful career after
the war and lived well, Mathew Brady did not live so well, but
he is better remembered.
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