A Civil War Image by Mathew Brady—Photograph

Photographs can teach us about life in different places and times in ways that words cannot. This photograph taken by Mathew Brady shows a Civil War camp scene of winter huts and log roads.

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Background

Mathew Brady and the people who worked with him took over 6,000 photographs during the Civil War. Brady, along with his business partners Alexander Gardner, George Barnard, and Timothy O'Sullivan, took many photographs of Civil War scenes between 1861 and 1865. These pictures include images of soldiers' camps and battlefields. One thing they could not photograph was battles, because in the 1860s cameras could not capture movement. People look at Brady's photographs today to understand how Civil War soldiers lived and how the war was fought.