George N. Barnard (American, 1819–1902)

b. 1819 — d. 1902

George N. Barnard American, 1819 - 1902 Born in Connecticut, in 1843 George Barnard opened one of America's first daguerreotype studios in Oswego, New York, shortly after the invention of photography. Ten years later, he produced a daguerreotype of the Ames Mill fire in Oswego (now in the collection of George Eastman House, Rochester). Considered the first news photograph, this image was reproduced as an engraving and circulated widely, gaining Barnard the public's attention. In 1854 Barnard moved his studio to Syracuse, where he began to use the collodion process. By the time of the Civil War, he had been hired by Mathew Brady and soon met many other fellow photographers—including Timothy O'Sullivan and Alexander Gardner, who also had adopted the wet plate process and whose work during these years paralleled Barnard's. Over the course of his career, he had several professional partners, including Alonzo C. Nichols and James F. Gibson. Barnard's Civil War work is probably his best known. In 1864 he was appointed official photographer for General William T. Sherman's march to the sea, a position that resulted in the 61 plates that constitute his Photographic Views of Sherman's Campaign (1866). A classic work of photographic reportage, its somewhat romantic style is quite distinct from that of his colleagues. After the war, Barnard operated a studio in Chicago, which was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1871 -- a scene that he photographed. He later worked briefly with George Eastman and from 1884-86 operated a studio in Painesville, Ohio, before his death in New York state. T.W.F.