George N. Barnard

(Coventry, Connecticut, 1819 - 1902, Cedarvale, New York)

North America, American

Pioneering photographer George N. Barnard is best known for his 1866 landmark publication of Civil War images, Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign. Barnard begin working with daguerreotypes in 1836, and ten years later, opened his first portrait studio in Oswego, New York. Noted photographer Mathew Brady hired Barnard in 1861 to photograph President Lincoln’s inauguration. The following year, Brady recruited him for his “Photographic Core,” a crew tasked with documenting the effects of the Civil War, using tents and wagons as darkrooms for the wet plate collodion process. In December 1863 Barnard signed on as photographer for the Military Division of the Mississippi, and created pictures of landscapes used to create topographic maps for Union general William Tecumseh Sherman’s campaign. In September 1864, Barnard travelled to Atlanta, photographing buildings and Confederate fortifications behind newly established Union lines. He followed Sherman for two months on his march to the coast, but was unable to make photographs until the forces captured Savannah. Barnard retraced Sherman’s campaign, photographing sites of important battles. After the war, Barnard established a studio in Chicago, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1871. He later moved to Ohio, opening a studio Painesville in 1884.

New York, United States

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