Mathew Brady Photos on Flickr
This afternoon we posted the first batch of Mathew Brady Civil War photographs on our Flickr photostream. These are at a higher resolution (300 dpi) than they are elsewhere online. We are planning to post all 6,066.
If looking at this selection sparks your curiosity, browse or search among all 6,000 now in the Archival Research Catalog: Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War-Era Personalities and Scenes. Click where it says, “Includes 6,066 items described in ARC” or “Search within this Series.”
This first set is just grouped as a selection. We have a few ideas for how we will begin organizing them into sets as we upload more, but would love to hear your suggestions for ways you might like to browse these photos (for example, by state, Confederate/Union, by battle, officers).
Posted by Jill on October 19, 2009, under Miscellaneous.
Comments: 10
Comments
Comment from Jill (Admin)
Time October 20, 2009 at 11:02 am
Thanks for the feedback, Jason. I think many of the photos can be grouped by battle and this would be a good way to do it. The nice thing about Flickr sets is that the same photo can be in more than one set.
Comment from Kelly in Kansas
Time October 23, 2009 at 10:07 am
By battle and by state sound especially useful for teachers and the public.
Comment from Elise Fillpot
Time October 23, 2009 at 10:31 am
1. Recurring subjects, i.e. does a photo record battle aftermath, posed officers or enlisted troops, a casual camp scene, etc.?
2. Gender. The search alone (which I suspect would yield a small percentage of photos that include women and then in medical support positions only) would illustrate how the role of women in the military has changed over time, when images from current wars are compared with Brady’s images.
3. Dates when taken and of publication or public presentation.
4. Venue of publication or public presentation of the image. This might help students explore and consider the original purpose for or impact of capturing various images.
Comment from Jill
Time October 23, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Kelly in Kansas, thanks for the helpful suggestions. I think we can definitely organize the photos this way. It’s nice to have the teacher’s perspective.
Elise, these are really interesting ideas. I think the first two suggestions are definitely do-able. The Flickr team typically works from the online catalog description for each photo as their background info and the publication or presentation info doesn’t seem to be included based on the ones I’ve looked at so far. We could check with the Still Pictures staff to see if they have info like this readily available. We know there are lots of Brady enthusiasts and experts out there, so we would be happy to have them comment or tag the photos on Flickr and provide info about publishing/presentation and any source info that they have on that. The comments we have seen on our Brady photos on Flickr so far from people who know a lot about the Civil War are really exciting!
- Jill (Admin)
Comment from Bob
Time October 23, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Location (as specific as possible as well as state)
Names of individuals so far as known
Subject matter (posed officers, dead troops after battle, etc.)
Insofar as possible, geotag them.
You could then have a series of maps–of the US, of states, of location within states–and permit users to run a mouse over the map and bring up the photos.
Pingback from Liens | Brièvement repérés et notés | 23 octobre 2009 « Quatrevingt-treize
Time October 24, 2009 at 1:07 am
[...] Brady, documentant la guerre civile américaine, sur le site Web de partage de photos Flickr [url/ang] + [url/ang]. Via : → AHA Today [...]
Comment from Jill (Admin)
Time October 26, 2009 at 3:01 pm
We agree geotagging has a lot of potential here. It could be so cool! We have the resources to geotag a sample, but we really hope that the public and our researchers will be excited about doing some geotagging to help us out.
- Jill
Comment from Nick Matyas
Time January 14, 2010 at 5:12 pm
It’s an awesome posting.
It is also very useful for many people like me.
Your writing is always fabulous.
Wishing that u will deliver this type of post in future also.
Comment from Jason
Time October 19, 2009 at 4:31 pm
I’m no Civil War buff, but by battle would be pretty cool – if that were feasible given the collection.