George Cook was the first known photographer to take a photograph of actual combat during a war. The image below is of Union ironclads firing on Fort Moultrie. Its description below is taken from the book- The Photographic History of the Civil War in 10 volumes, which can be viewed at the link. Cook was born in Stratford, Connecticut in 1819, orphaned as an infant, and raised by his maternal grandmother in Newark, New Jersey. He would later move to New Orleans. After studying fine art he began a career in photography.

He ran a gallery in that city for 10 years. In 1849 he moved to Charleston and opened a studio at 235 King Street.

He lived at 28 South Battery Street in the city.

In 1880 he relocated to Richmond and established a studio there until his death in 1902. He is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond- Section 13, Plot 12.

The text reads “On the highest point of the battered dust heap that was the still untaken fortress of Sumter, the Confederate photographer, Cook, planted his camera on September 8, 1863, and took the first photograph of ironclads in action. The monitors Wehawken, Montauk and Passaic as they were actually firing on the Confederate batteries at Fort Moultrie. The three low-freeboarded vessels, lying almost bows-on, at the distance of nearly two miles, look like great iron buoys in the channel, but the smoke from their heavy guns is drifting over the water, and the flames can almost be seen leaping from the turret ports. Although Fort Moultrie was the aim of their gunners, Cook, with his head under the dark cloth, saw on the ground glass a shell passing within a few feet of him. Another shell knocked one of his plate-holders off the parapet into the rain-water cistern. He gave a soldier five dollars to fish it out for him. He got his picture- and was ordered off the parapet, since he was drawing upon the fort the fire of all the Union batteries on Morris Island. It seems incredible that such a daring photographic feat, and one of such historic interest, could have remained unpublished for nearly half a century- until one recalls the absence of any satisfactory method for reproducing photographs direct during the generation succeeding the war. Before photo-engraving became perfected, thirty years or more had passed, and most of the few negatives taken by Confederates had vanished through fire, loss, and breakage. Fortunately, this has been preserved one of the most vivid of any war.”

Other photographs of interest he took during the war are shown below (all of these can be found on the Library of Congress website).

Two pictures of the interior of Fort Sumter in 1863 after an extended period of Federal Artillery bombardment. He took many more photographs of the interior of Fort Sumter not shown here.

In the image below you can see the smoke of a shell exploding in Fort Sumter just to the right of center. This image is often credited to Cook but according to the book The Blue and Gray in Black and White by Bob Zeller it is in reality a painting by Confederate Lieutenant John R. Key based on three half stereo photographs taken by Cook inside Fort Sumter on September 8, 1863. Apparently no camera at the time was capable of taking the wide angle view depicted.

Cook was also the first photographer of the Civil War to capture images of American prisoners of war. The negatives are in the Cook Collection at the Valentine Museum in Richmond.

He also took photographs of the staff at Fort Sumter in February 1861.

Other pictures of interest.

An online exhibit of some of his and his son Heustis’ images of Richmond at the turn of the 20th century can be found at the link.

Sources

The Photographic History of the Civil War in 10 Volumes

Photographer Under Fire: The Story of George S. Cook (1819-1902) by Jack C. Ramsay Jr.