Civil War Pictures

To see our full collection of
Civil War Pictures,

"From the first, I regarded myself as under obligation to my country to preserve the faces of its historic men and mothers."

--Mathew Brady, on his decision to begin taking Civil War pictures from the battlefield.

Who among us hasn't dreamed of being transported to another world, be it far-away lands, other planets, or other times in history?  Indeed, it was probably in response to this desire that the science of photography was first developed.   The earliest and most successful pioneer of this art form in the United States was none other than Samuel Morse, also responsible for another space and time-compressing invention: the telegraph.  Mastering the early process of daguerreotype production, Morse taught his technique to Mathew Brady.  By 1844, around the same time David Haviland was producing his earliest pieces of china dinnerware in France, Mathew Brady had opened his own photography studio in New York City.

By the time the Civil War erupted in 1861, Brady had already gained tremendous popularity with his production of portrait photographs.  Feeling a strange and irresistible desire to bring the glories and horrors of war closer to American eyes, Brady left behind his comfortable studio to begin taking Civil War pictures directly from the battlefield.  “I had to go,” he wrote. “A spirit in my feet said ‘Go’ and I went.”

The art of photography was only 20 years old when such pioneering photographers as Matthew Brady traveled the battlefields and towns of America in turmoil.  Working with such relatively primitive technology, taking Civil War pictures amidst the heat of the battle was no easy task.  It required the work of two photographers working in concert.  One would mix the chemicals and place them upon a glass plate, while the other photographer positioned and focused the camera.  The plate was rushed to the camera for exposure and then rushed back to the tent for development, all within a matter of minutes.  Clearly, the Civil War pictures presented in our collection are the result of nearly incomprehensible levels of skill and devotion.

In 1862, Mathew Brady presented an exhibition entitled “The Dead of Antietam.”  These gruesome Civil War pictures were, for many Americans in the North, the closest they had ever come to the actual horrors of the war.  While he was able to sell a number of the Civil War pictures in the North while the battles still raged, there was a universal desire among Americans to put the whole ordeal behind them once the war ended.  Having staked practically everything on his Civil War picture enterprise, Brady quickly fell into bankruptcy and despair.  In 1875, Congress purchased his entire collection of Civil war pictures and eventually placed them in the Library of Congress.

Tragically, Brady considered his whole body of work, including all of his diligently sought Civil War pictures, to have been an ultimate failure.  Brady said, "No one will ever know what I went through to secure those negatives. The world can never appreciate it. It changed the whole course of my life."  In retrospect, however, it is easy to appreciate how profoundly Brady’s Civil War pictures affected American’s understanding of war, not to mention photojournalism in times of war.

We have assembled a collection of exceptional Civil War pictures that show in amazing detail the world as it was during our nation’s greatest crisis.  Many of these are from the famous Mathew Brady Civil War picture collection, but also represent the work of a number of other photographers who worked during that era.

With our high-resolution photographs available for picture framing, obtained from the Library of Congress Civil War picture collection, you can be literally inserted into the world that existed at that time, in both its terrible and sublime aspects. These extraordinary reproductions must literally be seen to be believed, with the panoramic scope that these extraordinary high-resolution Civil War pictures make possible. You will be able to see details you may not have thought possible with such early technology, right down to the design of the officers’ buttons, the workmanship on the weaponry, and the intense eyes of the combatants.

Digital Picture Printing & Frames is making most of these Civil War pictures available in sweeping scope, framed as large as 40” x 52”. All of our Civil War picture products provide the incredibly high level of resolution of these photographic reproductions.  You will indeed be transported into another world and feel as though you are a part of it yourself!