VIRGINIA, Richmond. MUSEUM OF THE CONFEDERACY.
                     

The Museum's PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION consists of more than 6,000 original images, most dating to the mid-19th century, and more than 7,000 negatives and color transparencies--copies of original images and photos of objects and manuscripts in the Museum's other collections--and thousands more research prints.   The Civil War was the first major war captured on film. Northern photographers, notably Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan, and George N. Barnard, traveled with the Federal armies and photographed the scenery of the war and even the gruesome aftermath of battle. An exhibit of photographs on 
"The Dead of Antietam" shocked the Northern public, prompting
the New York Times to observe: "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 door-yards
and along the streets, he has done something very like it."
  No photographers traveled with the Confederate armies, but
photographic studios were common in Southern cities, towns, and
even in military camps. As a result, "Confederate" photography
consisted largely of portrait photographs of soldiers and their
families. The most renowned portion of the Museum's photographic
holdings is the collection of more than 310 "cased image"
photographs of Confederate soldiers and Southern civilians,
white and black. Often mistakenly called by the generic name
"daguerreotypes," cased images can denote daguerreotypes,
ambrotypes or tintypes, they in common being kept in velvet-
lined protective cases. More than a third of the cased images
are of Confederate soldiers, representing the largest known
assemblage of identified uniformed Confederate soldier images
in existence. Perhaps the most poignant images are those of
women and children--many of them unknown--that were found among
the effects of dead soldiers.
  The Museum collection also has 2,500 cartes-de-visite (cdvs)
or visiting cards. Mass produced and inexpensive, cdvs were
easily obtained collectibles in wartime America.
  Although known for its wartime images, the Museum has an
unparalleled collection of photographs documenting the postwar
Confederate memorial period. These include individual and group
portraits of Confederate veterans and the United Daughters of
the Confederacy, as well as monuments and monument dedications
throughout the South.
  To learn more about the Museum's photograph collection, call
804-649-1861 x. 17, e-mail Photographic Collections, or write
the Museum at 1201 E. Clay Street, Richmond, Virginia 23219.
  http://www.moc.org/xcolphotos.htm