Presented by John W. Stauffer, Chair of the History of American Civilization Program and professor of English and African and African American Studies, Harvard University

In 1966, journalist Michael Arlen coined the term “living-room war” to characterize the way in which images of Vietnam permeated American consciousness. Civilians witnessed, supposedly for the first time, the “terrible reality” of war in their own homes. But the idea of a living-room war dates back to the 19th century. Barely 20 years after the birth of photography, millions of images saturated the North, emphasizing not war’s gallantry and romance, but its “terrible reality,” as Civil War photographer Andrew Russell phrased it.

Although the halftone process was decades away, its precursor—the wood engraving—enabled images from photographers (and eyewitness artists) to be reproduced in the illustrated weeklies. These weeklies, the forerunners of Time and Life, reached almost a quarter of the Northern populace. As a result of this massive dissemination, Civil War photographs (and the engravings cut from them) not only introduced society to a new form of documentation but also exploded visions of war as heroic pageantry; helped convert millions of Northerners from “hawks” to “doves”; and fueled the secession crisis and the onset of war.

John Stauffer contrasts the influence of Civil War photographs and engravings with that of paintings, lithographs, and other wartime visual imagery, and briefly explains how Civil War photographs shaped literature, politics, and history.

This event is free and open to the public. A reception to meet the speaker follows the lecture.

This lecture is the second of four annual lectures presented in conjunction with the MFAH sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War, 1861–65. Funding for this lecture series is provided by the MFAH patron groups Five-A (the African American Art Advisory Association) and American Art and Wine, as well as the MFAH department of American painting and sculpture.