Field Where General Reynolds Fell, Gettysburg

Along with Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan was one of the primary photographers of the American Civil War. Using wet-plate glass negatives, a cumbersome and labor-intensive technology that did not allow for images of active battle, O'Sullivan concentrated on the war's harrowing aftermath. This photograph depicts a scene following the Battle of Gettysburg, one of the war's bloodiest confrontations, in which thousands of men on both sides lost their lives. The lifeless, exposed bodies of the six soldiers who appear in the photograph had been picked over by survivors searching for shoes and other valuables. This image was among 44 of O'Sullivan's photographs included in Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War, one of the first published collections of Civil War photographs.