The Disturbing History Of Death Photography

Death photography wasn't just limited to the home. Right as photography was becoming more popular, the Civil War broke out. This meant that for essentially the first time in history, accurate images could be taken of generals, moments in battle, and ... the aftermath. Unless war was happening on your doorstep, it had always been a far-off thing. Now, photography showed the casualties of war in vivid detail to every person on both sides of the fighting, and it wasn't pretty.

According to NBC News, the premiere Civil War photographer was Matthew Brady, although he had a large group of assistants, many of whom took some of the famous photos credited to him. A lot of those photos were of piles of dead soldiers or bodies strewn across battlefields. In 1862, the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it."

These images were first shown in galleries (photography was and is, after all, an artform), and then many of the pictures were reproduced in newspapers or as collectable cards. There is no doubt they were effective. While there is some debate over whether Brady and his team moved bodies to create better images, what they definitely did was remind those on the homefront that death wasn't always as pretty as their photos of seemingly sleeping children made it seem.

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