Andrew Joseph Russell (March 20, 1829 – September 22, 1902) was a 19th-century photographer of the American Civil War and the Union Pacific Railroad. Russell photographed construction of the Union Pacific (UP) in 1868 and 1869. Early life Andrew J. Russell was born March 20, 1829, in Walpole, New Hampshire, the son of Harriet (née Robinson) and Joseph Russell. He was raised in Nunda, New York. He took an early interest in painting and executed portraits and landscapes for family members and for local public figures. The Civil War During the first two years of the Civil War, Russell painted a diorama used to recruit soldiers for the Union Army. On August 22, 1862, he volunteered at Elmira, New York, mustering in the following month as Captain in Company F, 141st New York Volunteer Regiment. In February 1863, Russell took an interest in photography and paid civilian photographer Egbert Guy Fowx $300 to teach him the collodion wet-plate process. Fowx was a free-lance photographer who worked both for noted photographer Mathew Brady and for the War Department. Russell took his first photographs with a camera that he borrowed from Fowx and Colonel Herman Haupt. Haupt used Russell's photographs to illustrate his reports. Haupt arranged to have Russell removed from his regiment on March 1, 1863, so that he could photograph for the United States Military Railroad and the Quartermaster Corps, until he mustered out in September 1865. Russell was the only military officer to photograph for the War Department during the Civil War. He is perhaps best known for "Confederate dead Behind the Stone Wall" and another photograph stated before taken during the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863. Transcontinental Railroad Russell photographed the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad in Wyoming and Utah Territories during 1868, as their official photographer. He published these photographs in numerous forms, including as an album with 50 tipped in albumen prints and accompanying text: The Great West Illustrated in a Series of Photographic Views Across the Continent Taken Along the Line of the Union Pacific Railroad, West from Omaha, Nebraska. With an Annotated Table of Contents, Giving a Brief Description of Each View; Its Peculiarities, Characteristics, and Connection with the Different Points on the Road. His training as a painter provided the foundation for this series of views, which laid out the promise of the western landscape. While some of the images