George N. Barnard

Born in Connecticut in 1819, George N. Barnard worked as the manager of a hotel in Oswego, New York, before opening a daguerreotype studio. In 1859 he moved his studio to New York City, and in subsequent years he went on to work for Matthew Brady making carte-de-visite photographs from Brady’s negatives. Barnard was a photographer for the Union Army during the Civil War, working initially in Nashville before being sent to Atlanta in 1864 to document Sherman's "March to the Sea." The 1864 photograph Battle Field of Atlanta, Georgia, which is held in MoCP's permanent collection, was taken during this period. In 1868 Barnard moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he stayed until the early 1880s, when he went to work for the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York. Barnard moved a number of additional times before moving to a farm near Syracuse, New York, where he died in 1902.

Text © Museum of Contemporary Photography, 2018