WAR PHOTOGRAPHY

Photo Imaging – Circle High School- Ms. Whiteside

"How they were able to look at the scenes of dead bodies and be calm enough to set up their equipment and try to portray reality, there is an unsung heroism there," said Alan Trachtenberg, retired professor of American history at Yale University. "It takes guts to do that."

Civil War

In the spring of 1861, decades of simmering tensions between the northern and southern United States over issues including states' rights versus federal authority, westward expansion and slavery exploded into the American Civil War (1861-65). The Civil War proved to be the costliest war ever fought on American soil, with some 620,000 of 2.4 million soldiers killed, millions more injured and the population and territory of the South devastated.

Civil War Photography

The 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln led the Union to victory in the Civil War and emancipated the South's African-American slaves.

Photography had been around for more than 20 years before the Civil War, but new techniques and commercialization led to its flowering just before conflict broke out. 

VIDEO: “Civil War Photography” by PBS -1:54 mins

http://video.pbs.org/video/1481819695/

http://www.nps.gov

Civil War Photography’s Impact Historians say that photography changed the war in several ways. 1.) It allowed families to have a keepsake representation of their fathers

or sons as they were away from home.

2. )Photography also enhanced the image of political figures like President Abraham Lincoln, who famously joked that he wouldn't have been re-elected without the portrait of him taken by photographer Matthew Brady.

These images were taken by small-town photographers and traveling camp photographers, which combined topped 5,000 by the time war broke out in 1861, Zeller said. More than a million such images were produced during the war.

"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," wrote the New York Times on Oct. 20, 1862

Civil War Photography’s Impact

3. Images of everyday life are also depicted for the first time in the Civil War, men playing cards, playing instruments or cleaning equipment. Black soldiers and slaves were also depicted for the first time, according to New York University professor Deborah Willis.

VIDEO: “Rare Photos Show Civil War Life” http://

news.discovery.com/history/us-history/rare-photos-show-civil-war-life-130221.htm

World War I

An escalation of threats and mobilization orders followed the incident, leading by mid-August to the outbreak of World War I, which pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (the so-called Central Powers) against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Japan (the Allied Powers). The Allies were joined after 1917 by the United States. The four years of the Great War…

By the time World War I ended in the defeat of the Central Powers in November 1918, more than 9 million soldiers had been killed and 21 million more wounded. 

media.iwm.org

WWI Documented on Film

VIDEO: “Rare WWI Images Found Inside Antique Camera by Photographer Anton Orlov) 1/2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/anton-orlov_n_2449168.html

VIDEO: “Poignant Photos Of WWI Downtime on the Western Front” 1:41 mins

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20177375

World War II

The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another international conflict–World War II–which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination. 

Over the next six years, the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and property around the globe than any previous war. Among the estimated 45-60 million people killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler's diabolical "Final Solution," now known as the Holocaust.

http://www.rnw.nl

WWII Captured on Film

Video: “Edward Steichen’s WWII Photographers” 5:36 mins

http://life.time.com/history/world-war-ii-classic-photos-from-life-magazine/#1

Slideshow: “Life in World War II: The Photos We

Remember” 23 pics

http://life.time.com/history/world-war-ii-classic-photos-from-life-magazine/#1

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Con, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The war began in 1954 (though conflict in the region stretched back to the mid-1940s).

Growing opposition to the war in the United States led to bitter divisions among Americans, both before and after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. In 1975, communist forces seized control of Saigon, ending the Vietnam War.

http://everyday-i-show.livejournal.com/82994.html

Vietnam War Captured on Film VIDEO: “Vietnam War photographer Nick

UT recalls Pulizer Prize-winning shot of girl running from napalm strike” 6:23 mins

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/world_news&id=8652396

VIDEO: “Kim Phuc, ‘Napalm Girl’ discusses life-changing moment” 6:27 mins

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/world_news&id=8654265

Students Reflection Questions 1. Consider the what you’ve learned

here today about war photography. How does capturing the war on film impact society?

2. Imagine yourself as the photographer during one of these wars. What kind of person do you think it takes to be a war photographer?

3. Do you think you would be able to be a war photographer? Why or why not?

Associated PressHorst Faas, on assignment in Vietnam. 1967.

references

History.com NBCnews.com ABCLocal.go.com (L.A. Cali.)

Extra Video: Iraq War Photographer Ashley Gilbertson 5:05 mins http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedd

ed&v=MUgWThcH31Y#!

Slideshow: Bedrooms of the Fallen http://www.bedroomsofthefallen.com/