neworleanslouisianaphotographydotcom

Check out this great map listing many studio or residential addresses of practicing photographers in New Orleans from the Civil War era to the mid 1900s.

Most photographers during this period were making Carte-de-Visites or simple calling cards or business cards. Individuals would use them as leave-behinds when visiting friends or family who were not at home.

When the state of Louisiana seceded from the Union in 1861 the Confederacy immediately started to assemble volunteer military units in New Orleans. It was here that many soldiers had their likeness captured in one of the many studios competing for portrait work along Canal and Poydras Streets. However, many photographers chose to leave their studios behind and enlist or turn their cameras on the active battlefields.

One of these photographers was Mrs. E. Beachbard, the only practicing female photographer in New Orleans at the time. Mrs. Beachbard followed the Confederate soldiers upon their exodus from New Orleans to Camp Moore, near Kentwood, L.A., where she made many ambrotypes like the one above prior to dying from disease.

Another photographer whose portrait studio success was also due to the influx of  Confederate soldiers in the city was photographer Theodore Lilienthal.

Theodore Lilienthal, who operated a studio on Poydras Street, began practicing the daguerreotype process about a year after Jules Lion first introduced it to the city. Lilienthal, a Prussian immigrant, initially found success with the large German population in New Orleans and later among Confederate and Union-occupying militia with his carte-de-visite miniature portraiture business. At the outset of the Civil War Lilienthal enlisted in the Washington Artillery where he operated as a cannoneer for local defense until the group was disbanded later that month due to Union occupation in New Orleans.

It was only after an appointment to commission a project that would appear at the Paris World Exposition by the New Orleans city council in the late 1860’s that Lilienthal became a widely-known photographer. His 150 albumen prints of views of the city of New Orleans, entitled La Nouvelle Orlean et ses Environs, was created for the European audience and considered to be the  first time photography was used to boost civic interest in the port city. The portfolio, which was created during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era in the south, was installed with the hope that it might foster a resurgence in overseas trade and tourism.

Sources:

http://www.knowla.org/entry/806/
http://www.washingtonartillery.com/New%20Orleans%20images.htm