Excerpt:
Until the invention of cameras and photographs, followed by the development of a practical way to print photographs in newspapers, the reading public pictured an event with the aid of an artist's rendering. In the 1860s, photographers recorded some events in American history for the first time. When photographer Matthew Brady exhibited photographs of corpses on the battlefield in 1862 at his New York City gallery, the public saw the gruesome realism of broken bodies for the first time. (See below.)