Born in Goffstown, New Hampshire, Henry P. Moore worked as a lithographer, printmaker, andphotographer. He was the oldest of five children when his widowed father remarried and moved to Concord, New Hampshire. There, his family ran a prominent tavern that provided food, lodging, and entertainment for travelers, and Moore was praised for his singing, banjo playing,m and skills as an entertainer. After Moore¿s father passed away when Henry was eleven, his step mother scaled down the business and opened a boarding house. Moore lived at the boarding house with his step mother until he was in his early twenties.

Like many other aspiring American artists during the mid-nineteenth century, Moore decided to work in the print industry. He sketched and published town views from 1854 to 1860. How Moore learned photography remains a mystery. However, by age twenty-seven his peers described him as a ¿well known photographer.¿ A savvy businessman, his photography studio on the island of Hilton Head, South Carolina, comprised a tent set up in a sandy cotton field.

Like his contemporary Timothy O¿ Sullivan (see O¿Sullivan¿s biography on the Getty Web site at www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1928), Moore¿s photographs taken during the American Civil War in South Carolina and Georgia differed from the typical photographs of the day. Rather than shooting posed portraits of officers in a studio, Moore shot on location and captured images of former slaves, soldiers in camps, and Navy warships.