Other photographs by Cook show the destruction that resulted in the first breach in the walls of the fort by the fire from Morris Island. It was through this breach that Federal forces unsuccessfully attempted to take the fort. Another view of the parade, apparently taken after the photograph of the exploding shell, shows two Confederate soldiers atop one of the fort’s bake ovens. The flag is no longer flying; the upper casement has been destroyed and the guns swept away.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Civil War Times magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

With the end of the Civil War, Cook re-established his professional connections with the North, trading once again with his New York suppliers. In 1874 Cook bought out the photographic gallery of David and Daniel Bendann in New York, but this venture soon failed. By 1880 Cook had decided to move his principal operation to Richmond, Virginia, where he bought out the photographic studio of D. H. Anderson. Cook’s eldest son remained in Charleston and managed the gallery there for ten years before selling it and moving to join his father in Richmond. George S. Cook continued as a studio portraitist until his death in 1902.

The Cook Studio continued to operate into the 1950’s under the direction of George Cook’s younger son, Huestis. The younger Cook furthered the reputation of excellence established by his father, photographing Virginia’s industry, agriculture, lands, and people with a keen appreciation of natural beauty. A collection of Cook photographs is now maintained by the Valentine Museum in Richmond and consists of over 10,000 photographs, including over 500 photographs of personalities of the war such as Braxton Bragg, A. P. Hill, John Mosby and P. G. T. Beauregard.

George Cook’s career spanned the early period of development of the photographic profession. During the first part of his career, Cook was a daguerreotypist. By the end of the Civil War, he had mastered the collodion wet plate and had produced ambrotypes and carte-de-viste photographs, and scorned the tintype as an inferior process, had produced dramatic stereographs, and had seen the dry plate supersede the wet plate. No one can fail to be impressed by the disregard shown to the “limitations” of the then current photographic medium, in addition to the fearlessness of the photographer, when viewing the Cook photographs taken at Fort Sumter. All during his career Cook continued to produce, as an 1881 advertisement proclaimed, “Beautiful Photographs… Unsurpassed in Artistic Effect.”

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to