The Crimean War was the first war to be documented by the newly invented camera. In this country, the photographers Alexander Gardner and Matthew Brady recorded the Civil War in all its brutal detail, bringing the conflict into sharp relief through the reality of the photographic image.

Gardner’s devastating documentary scenes of the Civil War show desolate fields filled with fallen soldiers. Gardner, who was appalled by the destruction of the war, actually staged many of these images, frequently moving bodies to improve the composition of the scene. He also posed live men as dead in order to create the dramatic affect – effective as a gruesome depiction of the results of war but not necessarily “true” in every sense.