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  • Lens of War: Exploring Iconic Photographs of the Civil War ed. by J. Matthew Gallman and Gary W. Gallagher
  • Joshua Shiver
Lens of War: Exploring Iconic Photographs of the Civil War. Ed. J. Matthew Gallman and Gary W. Gallagher. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-8203-4810-0, 256 pp., cloth, $32.95.

The American Civil War witnessed the first large-scale use of photography in military history. Unlike previous wars, the photographs that were produced by Alexander Gardner, Mathew Brady, and Timothy O’Sullivan have shaped our collective understanding of the war through the present day. Though photographs stand as a powerful witness to the past, until recently, Civil War historians have largely ignored them as historical evidence, opting instead for “firmer” sources of information, such as diaries, letters, and dispatches. Yet what have we missed by ignoring the value of photographs as historical evidence? In Lens of War: Exploring Iconic Photographs of the Civil War, editors J. Matthew Gallman and Gary W. Gallagher seek to answer this question by asking twenty-seven of the country’s leading Civil War historians for their personal reflections on one photograph of their choosing. The result is a book unlike almost any other on Civil War photography.

Organized across five broad themes that include leaders, soldiers, civilians, victims, and places, Lens of War breaks from previous photographic accounts of the war by carefully balancing each historian’s cerebral interpretation of a photograph with reflections of the image’s personal significance on the life of the historian. The result is a book that explains not only the mechanics behind Civil War photography but also how these images continue to affect and influence [End Page 236] individuals. “This is a book about photographs, and about historians,” Gallman and Gallagher emphasize. “People who study the Civil War era spend an enormous amount of energy thinking about and talking about photographs. Yet, we seldom take the photograph as our subject, and we almost never share personal reflections that stray beyond our normal academic writing” (2). Leading historians such as James I. Robertson Jr., Carol Reardon, Gary W. Gallagher, Emory M. Thomas, Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Stephen Berry, James Marten, Joseph T. Glatthaar, and more go beyond the typically bland analysis of photographic techniques as well as the use of images in shaping historical consciousness to reflect on how these images have shaped their own personal feelings and views of the Civil War. For example, years after stumbling upon a gruesome image of a lone, bloodied Union corpse, historian James Marten reflects, “I did not realize until I was studying the picture again, placing it in its various contexts, that perhaps it had been a safe way for me to work out my fears and fascination with the idea of war” (156). Herein lies the strength of Lens of War. In effect, the book cuts below the surface and allows the reader to peer beyond the cerebral study of the war to understand the very personal meanings that still exist for individuals drawn to the study of America’s costliest war.

Yet this is not a work of just personal reflections either. It also provides a cursory glimpse of how historians use photographs as historical evidence. Though not a how-to book, it nonetheless provides a number of examples of historians using techniques of interpretation that help flesh out the meaning behind each photograph. In the case of James Marten’s essay, everything from the hat that lay beside a bloodied Union corpse to the pile of rubble in the background provide basic clues to the soldier’s final moments. Yet it also addresses the thorny questions surrounding the morality of war photography by looking at, for example, why many photographers staged their photographs as well as what this practice says about American society writ large during the war.

Of course, Lens of War does have its flaws. Though the editors have done a fine job of both editing and organizing the book, there is a certain unevenness in the quality of each article—as is often the case in edited collections. Nonetheless, unlike most other photographic books on the Civil War, Lens...

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