The Business of War Photography, from the Second World War to the Cold War

This declaration of photography's apparently bellicose nature, published in the New York Times in the summer of 1862, was prompted by the stir caused by ‘Incidents of the War’, Mathew Brady's seminal photographic exhibition in New York. The albumen prints on display, depicting the aftermath of the Bull Run and battlefield casualties amongst other subjects, vividly brought the American Civil War before a mesmerized US public. Clio, as the article's intended readership was expected to have known, was the Greek muse of history. Minerva, worshipped by Romans, was the goddess of wisdom and patroness of the arts who, according to myth, emerged from her father's head fully-formed and ready for combat, bearing armour and weapons. Clio and Minerva seem fitting figureheads for the practice of war photography, conventionally held to be a means of both visually depicting combat for contemporary civilian viewers, and truthfully documenting the historical progress of conflicts for posterity.