War photography
[citation needed] Since early photographers were not able to create images of moving subjects, they recorded more sedentary aspects of war, such as fortifications, soldiers, and land before and after battle along with the re-creation of action scenes.
These consisted of portraits of fellow officers, key figures from the campaigns,[4] administrators and their wives and daughters, including Patrick Alexander Vans Agnew,[6]: 911 Hugh Gough, 1st Viscount Gough; the British commander General Sir Charles James Napier; and Dewan Mulraj, the governor of Multan.
His photographs were probably intended to offset the general aversion of the British people to the war's unpopularity, and to counteract the occasionally critical reporting of correspondent William Howard Russell of The Times.
[citation needed] Fenton also photographed the landscape – his most famous image was of the area near to where the Charge of the Light Brigade took place.
Teaming up with Charles Wirgman, a correspondent for The Illustrated London News, he accompanied the attack force travelling north to the Taku Forts.
Beato's photographs of the Second Opium War were the first to document a military campaign as it unfolded, doing so through a sequence of dated and related images.
[21] During the American Civil War, Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner began recreating scenes of battle in order to overcome the limitations of early photography with regard to the recording of moving objects.
Despite instantaneous photography being commercially available, most photographers took older cameras in the field as they had less delicate components, and so had to forfeit the ability to capture motion.
[22] Gardner and Brady rearranged bodies of dead soldiers during the Civil War in order to create a clear picture of the atrocities associated with battle.
In June 1866, the Montevideo firm of Bate y Compañía commissioned Uruguayan photographer Javier López to travel to the field of battle.
British war photographer Francis Gregson was attached to the Anglo-Egyptian troops under the command of Herbert Kitchener during the reconquest of the Sudan.
[33] Unlike paintings, which presented a single illustration of a specific event, photography offered the opportunity for an extensive amount of imagery to enter circulation.
The advent of mass-reproduced images of war were not only used to inform the public but they served as imprints of the time and as historical recordings.
Besides informing the public, the glut of images in distribution over-saturated the market, allowing viewers to develop the ability to disregard the immediate value and historical importance of certain photographs.
War photography has become more dangerous with the advent of terrorism in armed conflict as some terrorists target journalists and photographers.
[35] Several were killed by US fire: two Iraqi journalists working for Reuters were notably strafed by a helicopter during the July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike, yielding a scandal when WikiLeaks published the video of the gun camera.
