Mathew Brady's Fake Corpse

Gettysburg Greg

First Sergeant
Joined
Jun 6, 2010
Location
Decatur, Illinois
Mathew Brady arrived in Gettysburg in mid July after all the bodies had been buried. His Gettysburg photographs give us fantastic views of the battlefield just as the soldiers had seen it two weeks before. However, Brady was well aware that the "money shot" of CW photography was to photograph fallen soldiers. Being an artist, not a historian, he had one of his assistants pose as a corpse in at least three different locations on the battlefield. The image below is a highly magnified crop from one of Brady's panoramas of Little Round Top. Zoomed in, you can see Brady and one assistants sitting in the wagon, looking up the Wheatfield Road at another assistant lying in the road impersonating an oddly positioned corpse. I found it interesting that Brady obviously carefully set up this scenerio, but in the full version of the photo, it is virtually impossible to see this detail.
brady lrt1 jpeg.jpg
 
Greg,

Do you know if Brady's original photo you used had been digitally enhanced? The photo has very good resolution for an 1863 photograph. Many 1863 photos are very grainy and look pretty poor when electronically blown up. The photo you used looks great when blown up.

Photography was in its infancy back in 1863 and there were no rules on the proper etiquette for staging a photo. Most of the photos that were staged looks authentic and I am confident they were staged with good intentions. Using living humans to recreate scenes is far more acceptable to me than moving corpses to setup a scene. I even staged my own avatar years ago. I am not in authentic civil war dress but you get my drift.

We went to Gettysburg last Monday and your posts here prompted me to take a few now and then shots. Because it was just an out and back day trip from my home, I couldn't budget too much time for then and now photos. But I did spend extra time in Devil's Den, the Triangular field and at the Split Rock on the Rose Farm. It was a bright sunny day and the light was perfect in those 3 locations. I even got my first orb photo at Gettysburg. My Gettysburg photo file has close to 1,300 photos. But I finally got an official Gettysburg Orb photo. I am not a ghost believer but it is cool.

Your outstanding work continues. Thank you for your efforts.
 
Greg,

Do you know if Brady's original photo you used had been digitally enhanced? The photo has very good resolution for an 1863 photograph. Many 1863 photos are very grainy and look pretty poor when electronically blown up. The photo you used looks great when blown up.

Photography was in its infancy back in 1863 and there were no rules on the proper etiquette for staging a photo. Most of the photos that were staged looks authentic and I am confident they were staged with good intentions. Using living humans to recreate scenes is far more acceptable to me than moving corpses to setup a scene. I even staged my own avatar years ago. I am not in authentic civil war dress but you get my drift.

We went to Gettysburg last Monday and your posts here prompted me to take a few now and then shots. Because it was just an out and back day trip from my home, I couldn't budget too much time for then and now photos. But I did spend extra time in Devil's Den, the Triangular field and at the Split Rock on the Rose Farm. It was a bright sunny day and the light was perfect in those 3 locations. I even got my first orb photo at Gettysburg. My Gettysburg photo file has close to 1,300 photos. But I finally got an official Gettysburg Orb photo. I am not a ghost believer but it is cool.

Your outstanding work continues. Thank you for your efforts.
I am no expert, but as I understand it, because these images were recorded on large plates, they are available at the Library of Congress in hi resolution format. I use these images all the time. They can be magnified over and over and still retain clarity. The image in my post was downloaded from the LOC site.
 
Isn't it amazing how clear some of them are? Takes your breath away. This photo is interesting because I'd looked at it around a million times without being aware Brady had killed off an assistant, thank you! As Pam said gosh he'd have been awfully well preserved. We read of how the poor, unburied became unspeakable out in July heat- then saw some deceased ( although not crazy about photographs of Civil War dead, seems so anonymous and intrusive, someone's son or husband or father, how awful for the family if anyone knew, you know? ).

This is one, too- a few more of the same at Gettysburg although not as ' Where's Waldo ' as the first. This is National Archives before they revised their downloads so beautifully so a lot smaller. There's a kind of theatrics about them, missing when death arrives, the real thing.

gb faux dead lrt.jpg


And very poorly edited
gb faux dead lrt crop.jpg
 
Isn't it amazing how clear some of them are? Takes your breath away. This photo is interesting because I'd looked at it around a million times without being aware Brady had killed off an assistant, thank you! As Pam said gosh he'd have been awfully well preserved. We read of how the poor, unburied became unspeakable out in July heat- then saw some deceased ( although not crazy about photographs of Civil War dead, seems so anonymous and intrusive, someone's son or husband or father, how awful for the family if anyone knew, you know? ).

This is one, too- a few more of the same at Gettysburg although not as ' Where's Waldo ' as the first. This is National Archives before they revised their downloads so beautifully so a lot smaller. There's a kind of theatrics about them, missing when death arrives, the real thing.

View attachment 94660

And very poorly edited
View attachment 94661
I'm familiar with this photo as one of Weaver's November 11, 1863 images in which he used personal stationed at Camp Letterman to "play dead" is several images recorded near Devil's Den. Thanks for posting and comment.
 
Greg,

Do you know if Brady's original photo you used had been digitally enhanced? The photo has very good resolution for an 1863 photograph. Many 1863 photos are very grainy and look pretty poor when electronically blown up. The photo you used looks great when blown up.

Photography was in its infancy back in 1863 and there were no rules on the proper etiquette for staging a photo. Most of the photos that were staged looks authentic and I am confident they were staged with good intentions. Using living humans to recreate scenes is far more acceptable to me than moving corpses to setup a scene. I even staged my own avatar years ago. I am not in authentic civil war dress but you get my drift.

We went to Gettysburg last Monday and your posts here prompted me to take a few now and then shots. Because it was just an out and back day trip from my home, I couldn't budget too much time for then and now photos. But I did spend extra time in Devil's Den, the Triangular field and at the Split Rock on the Rose Farm. It was a bright sunny day and the light was perfect in those 3 locations. I even got my first orb photo at Gettysburg. My Gettysburg photo file has close to 1,300 photos. But I finally got an official Gettysburg Orb photo. I am not a ghost believer but it is cool.

Your outstanding work continues. Thank you for your efforts.
Funny, Walleyfish, I always thought Brady shot your avatar. No? :bounce:
 
Funny, Walleyfish, I always thought Brady shot your avatar. No? :bounce:


I am not quite that old War Horse. Brady did not take my avatar. I can't remember if it was Eastman or Kodak who shot it! No now I remember, it was Edwin Land.

Can you imagine if there were smart phones back in 1863. We may have seen a selfie or two from Dan Sickles. My times have changed.
 
I'm familiar with this photo as one of Weaver's November 11, 1863 images in which he used personal stationed at Camp Letterman to "play dead" is several images recorded near Devil's Den. Thanks for posting and comment.


Whoa, all the way into November? One of the photographers who came for the dedication, decided to take bodies over to the battlefield? Wow! You know, it is very difficult trying to tell which month by what people are wearing! 1863 was one of our ridiculously hot, awful, humid and unusual even for Pennsylvania, stinkin' hot summers yet photos capture all these people covered head-to-toe.
 
Whoa, all the way into November? One of the photographers who came for the dedication, decided to take bodies over to the battlefield? Wow! You know, it is very difficult trying to tell which month by what people are wearing! 1863 was one of our ridiculously hot, awful, humid and unusual even for Pennsylvania, stinkin' hot summers yet photos capture all these people covered head-to-toe.
To be clear, there are no dead bodies in the photo, these are live soldiers posing as dead.
 
Good Observation!
Ironically about a week before Brady arrival in Gettysburg, Sullivan and Gibson did photograph real Rebel corpses {besides the ones at the Rose Farm}...in Devils Den and among the rocks of Little Round Top...A R Ward sketched dead rebel in one of his sketches....
 
Do we know the location of where the first shot was taken, and the direction of the camera? Because the makeshift breastworks shown, incorporating fence rails, appears to be an outpost for a handful of skirmishers/sharpshooters and perhaps was constructed after dark on July 2.
 
Do we know the location of where the first shot was taken, and the direction of the camera? Because the makeshift breastworks shown, incorporating fence rails, appears to be an outpost for a handful of skirmishers/sharpshooters and perhaps was constructed after dark on July 2.
Yes, the view is SE from the Wheatfield Road with Little Round Top in the background. This area was is in the north end of the Valley of Death. My original pic is quite cropped so I'll add the uncropped version.
01656v-LOC-Gettysburg-Little-Round-Top-1863-1.jpg
 
Greg,

Do you know if Brady's original photo you used had been digitally enhanced? The photo has very good resolution for an 1863 photograph. Many 1863 photos are very grainy and look pretty poor when electronically blown up. The photo you used looks great when blown up. ...


I am no expert, but as I understand it, because these images were recorded on large plates, they are available at the Library of Congress in hi resolution format. I use these images all the time. They can be magnified over and over and still retain clarity. The image in my post was downloaded from the LOC site.

@Wallyfish You asked if the images had been digitally enhanced and about the resolution for an 1863 photo. As @Gettysburg Greg mentioned that the images were recorded on glass plates. While photography was still in it's infancy it had been around for about 25-30 years and a number of things had been improved greatly since the earliest photos in the 1830's. The quality of these images is actually far superior to what we have today in terms of clarity, primarily because they had limited knowledge and basically did not know how to make things any other way.

I have lectured at a few of the Image Of War seminars conducted by the Center for Civil War Photography. During several of those seminars the discussion of why you can zoom in so close has come up. The basic reason is that the amount of silver nitrate used on the glass plate was very high. Much higher than was really necessary. This meant that the photographs took 4-10 seconds in bright sun and 30-60 seconds for studio images. Today of course you can adjust the ISO in your camera phone to get the time down to a fraction of a second. If you were using a 35 mm film camera a few years ago though the amount of silver used on the film strips was reduced greatly compared to the 19th century. This allowed much shorter exposure times, but also much more grain on enlargements.

For CW era images it was not possible to produce an enlargement so the negative needed to be the same size as the finished print. This meant that if you wanted an 8x10" print, you needed an 8x10" negative. Comparatively a 35 mm negative is about 1 x 1.4". When scanned the resulting images from the LOC produce the equivalent of around 42 Mp. This means that you can zoom in and enlarge considerably more without "grain" than you can on any modern camera.

In fact if you wanted to you could scan the CW era glass plate negative even closer. Because of the grain size and amount of silver used on glass plates during the 19th century the curator for the photography section of the Library of Congress told me that you could enlarge the images down to the atomic level with no loss of grain. That means that while the images available on the LOC today are 42 Mp equivalent that it would be technically possible to scan them again and produce a 400 or 4,000 Mp (or more) image. The real limitation for this though is that while the quality would be excellent the only advantage would be displaying small distant parts of some of the plates. This has been done for a few specific ones. The more prominent that comes to mind is one of Lincoln at Gettysburg that reportedly shows him just before his address.

By the time of the Civil War most of the images were produced in one of two ways.

1. Stereo camera (most popular) to produce 3D stereo card. The plate was 4" tall by 10" wide and recorded two images one for each left/right eye. When trimmed down to final size the of 3.5" x 7".

2. Large Plate this was usually a 5x7" or 8x10" glass plate. The size and quality of these images is astounding!

So, why are you seeing or remembering grainy Civil War images???

Three main reasons:

1. Prints were made on something closer to paper that you would use in a laser printer or copy machine and were not what we think of today as "Photo paper". The amount of grain visible is really based on the limitations of the print, not the negative.

2. Reprints. Until just the last few years access to the original negatives (via digital scan) was not possible. This meant that if you wanted to make a copy of an image you used an existing copy of a print. While this kept the negative in good condition (thankfully) it meant that the quality was reduced, even when using more modern photo paper. To make a reprint you would typically take a 35 mm camera and photograph the print to produce a work print. The Library of Congress in fact did this for most all of the images that they have and used those working copies when reprints were requested.

In reality what this did though was reduce the quality from an original negative that may have been as large as 8x10" down to the 1 x 1.4" of the 35 mm print. These "new" negatives are then reprinted and the quality & grain means that got worse and worse.

3. Time. The other effect was time which caused prints to fade from exposure to sun and the elements. The paper (especially images printed on non-photo paper) eroded and now you have an image that barely qualifies as a photograph any longer.

If you look through the original negatives from the National Archives and especially the Library of Congress you will find that the original negatives are amazingly sharp and thanks to access to the digital scans we will continue to find little discoveries like this one for years to come.
 
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