How a photograph was made at Fort Sumter

A wet-plate photographer could not simply carry a camera. The process required a sheet of glass to be flowed with collodion, sensitized in a bath of silver nitrate, exposed while still wet, and developed immediately — a working window of perhaps ten or fifteen minutes from coating to fixing.

So the darkroom went where the camera went. A wagon, a tent, or a converted room within reach of the tripod; bottles, baths, a supply of clean water; and glass, which is heavy and breaks.

What that meant at Charleston

It meant that photographing Fort Sumter was an expedition. Alma Pelot had to be landed at the fort with his outfit on 15 April 1861 and be finished before his plates dried. Osborn made twenty-six views, which means twenty-six coatings, exposures and developments in the same conditions.

It meant that Haas & Peale kept studios on Morris Island and at Hilton Head rather than traveling light, and that Sam Cooley ran four locations and three assistants.

And it meant that when the wind was wrong or the fort was under fire, there were no photographs at all. The gaps in the record are not always gaps in interest.

The one picture that shows it

In April 1865 a photographer on the parapet of Fort Sumter photographed another photographer at work: Sam Cooley standing beside his camera, wagon behind him, on the broken masonry. Davis and Melton credit George N. Barnard with the exposure; the Library of Congress record names Cooley in the title and leaves the creator blank.

Whoever made it, it is the best evidence in this section of what the work actually looked like.