Fort Brady, Virginia 1861 - 1865

Andrew Joseph Russell made this photograph, Fort Brady, Virginia, using a wet collodion on glass negative. The material itself, glass, had to be meticulously prepared, coated, and then immediately exposed in the camera while still wet, marking a moment captured in time. Consider all the labor embedded in this image: the making of wooden barrels, the carts for hauling them, the uniforms worn by the men, and of course the heavy labor of building a fort. This was a war propelled by industrialization, but as you can see here, still utterly dependent on manual work. The glass plate negatives, with their incredible detail, were used to document these efforts for posterity. In viewing photographs like this, we can look beyond the represented subject matter and understand the cultural and economic context in which it was made. Rather than treating photography solely as fine art, we can recognize its role in depicting labor, politics, and consumption during a period of conflict and change.