Historical shocker -- Was Matthew Brady a fraud?!

Most Civil War buffs will say that the iconic images of battlefield dead from the Civil War are the work of Matthew Brady, the preeminent American photographer who photographed Lincoln in his Washington DC studio. They'd also be arguably wrong.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - According to a new book, a Scottish photographer, Alexander Gardner, actually captured many of the most iconic images of the war. Matthew Brady, the man who often gets the credit, allegedly stole the credit for the work as he operated a studio and gallery in Washington DC.

According to Keith Steiner, the author of "In the Footsteps of Alexander Gardner at Antietam and Gettysburg" he wanted to correct an injustice, explaining, "Most of the photos you see of the American Civil War were taken either by Gardner or his Scottish contemporaries but he (Gardner) was the greatest of them all. He was never given the credit."

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Instead, credit went to Matthew Brady, who knew Abraham Lincoln. Yet, it was Gardner, not Brady, who most often photographed Lincoln, including the president's final portrait taken just a week before his assassination.

Gardner's work, according to Steiner, includes most of the famous images of the dead.

Images during the time were difficult to capture, and required that plates be developed in toxic chemicals for an extended period of time. The dead made for excellent subjects not only because of the dramatic effect, but also because the exposures needed to make the images were long, and the dead do not move.

Gardner, or whoever took many of the pictures, has been accused of moving the dead to take better pictures. At that time, there were no journalistic standards or ethics for photographers, since their work was considered artistic as opposed to journalistic. Photographs still did not appear in newspapers during that time.

Regardless of who gets the credit, the lesson is primarily twofold. First, history is not a story about the "Truth" with a capital "T." History is surprisingly dynamic and the story changes based on what questions are asked, where they are asked, and who is answering them, and so on. History is fluid, not a constant as many people assume. The story of history can change as new primary sources and evidence is uncovered.

Second, the images of the dead still bring home the reality of war unlike anything else. In many images, bloating corpses with their jackets unbuttoned -presumably because soldiers were checking to see where they were hit -a hit in the chest or torso was generally considered fatal, are haunting. Their faces retain an expression of painful surprise, and their mouths betray a final, tragic resignation to their fate on the field. During the Civil War, the wounded were generally left where they lay until a battle had moved on or ended. There was no urgency to clearing the field or to bring home the dead as there is today.

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War was horrific during Brady and Gardner's time, and the images, no matter who took them, still resonate with that solemn warning.

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