Alexander Gardner

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Alexander Gardner around 1865

Alexander Gardner (born October 17, 1821 in Paisley , Scotland , † December 10, 1882 in Washington, DC , USA ) was an American photographer. He was best known for his photographs from the American Civil War and portraits of the American President Abraham Lincoln .

The early years

At the age of 14, Gardner began an apprenticeship at a jeweler in Glasgow . The adolescent was impressed by the writings of Robert Owen , the Welsh socialist and father of the cooperative movement . As a young man he helped found the Clydesdale Joint Stock Commercial & Agricultural Company , the aim of which was to raise funds for land purchase in the United States and to set up a cooperative there to implement the principles of socialism. In 1850 he traveled to the USA with his brother James and seven like-minded people, and suitable land was bought near Monona , Iowa . Gardner did not stay there, however, but went back to Scotland to raise more money and recruit new members. In 1851 he became the owner and editor of the Glasgow Sentinel, a weekly newspaper whose sales he increased rapidly and in whose editorials he advocated social reforms in favor of the working class . During a visit to the World's Fair in London in 1851 , he saw the work of the American photographer Mathew B. Brady ; therefore he began to deal intensively with photography. In his newspaper he now also wrote reviews of photo exhibitions.

In the spring of 1856, Gardner emigrated to the United States with his mother, wife Margaret, and two children. Upon arriving at the Clydesdale Colony, he found that many friends and some relatives had died of tuberculosis or were terminally ill. Gardner left the colony and moved with his family to New York , contacted Brady and was employed by him. As a specialist in the new photographic working process with the collodion wet plate , which quickly supplanted the daguerreotype , as well as in particularly large image formats that could be sold at high prices, Gardner was very welcome in Brady's company. From February 1858 he headed its studio in Washington DC

Civil war

Southerners killed in the Battle of Antietam, lined up for funeral

In November 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president; the slave-holding states of the south withdrew from the Union of the United States, and the Civil War (1861–1865) was just around the corner. Gardner was in the right place in Washington. His popularity as a photographer increased; he portrayed many of the soldiers and senior officers who went to war. When Brady developed the idea of ​​documenting the Civil War comprehensively with photographs, Gardner was able to interest the president in the project through his acquaintance with Allan Pinkerton , who was then responsible for Lincoln's security. Brady himself photographed the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862 , but otherwise stayed mostly in Washington and organized the work of his 20 or so employees on the theaters of war; each of them had their own portable darkroom for processing the collodion plates. Gardner was temporarily an official photographer for the Northern Potomac Army through Pinkerton's influence in November 1861 , his rank being that of honorary captain. He photographed the battle of Antietam (September 1862), the fights of Fredericksburg (December 1862) and Gettysburg (July 1863), and the siege of Petersburg (June 1864 to April 1865).

Gardner had already separated from Brady at the end of 1862, partly because of his habit of marketing the work of his employees without exception under the Brady name . In May 1863, Alexander Gardner and his brother James opened their own studio in Washington, hiring a number of former Brady employees. Her two-volume work " Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War " was published in 1865/1866. Each volume contained 50 original prints of war photos . The laborious manual work and the resulting high price of $ 150 led to a financial failure. Not all of the photos were actually from Gardner - as an employer, he now also published photos of his employees under his own name. Contributors to the “Sketchbook” were Timothy H. O'Sullivan , James F. Gibson, John Reekie, William R. Pywell, John Wood, George N. Barnard , David Knox, David Woodbury, and others. Investigations around a hundred years later revealed that Gardner had manipulated at least one of his motifs : the corpse of the same enemy soldier was seen in different positions on different shots - the photographer had obviously rearranged them because of the dramatic effect.

Gardner has photographed President Abraham Lincoln several times. A representative portrait that is still widely used today was created on November 8, 1863, just a few days before Lincoln's famous speech on the battlefield of Gettysburg, the " Gettysburg Address ". Another well-known picture of Lincoln was taken on April 10, 1865, four days before the fatal assassination attempt on Lincoln . Gardner took photos of Lincoln's funeral and he photographed the four captured accomplices of the real assassin John Wilkes Booth , who was shot while trying to escape. Only Gardner was allowed to take pictures when the four co-conspirators were hanged. His pictures were converted into woodcuts and appeared in "Harper's Weekly".

  • Portrait of Abraham Lincoln 8 November 1863

  • Portrait of Abraham Lincoln from April 10, 1865 before his death on April 14, 1865

  • Execution of four Lincoln assassins, 1865

  • Bridge over the Antietam River, 1862

  • Cover of "Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War"

After the war

After the end of the war, Gardner was commissioned to photograph Indian negotiators who came to Washington to sign contracts, and he documented the expansion of the railroad network in Kansas , Missouri and Mississippi for the Union Pacific Railroad . In 1871 he stopped working as a photographer and took part in founding an insurance company . He lived in Washington until his death in 1882. When asked about his photographic work, he replied, “It should speak for itself. Hopefully it will be of lasting interest as a reminder of the terrible fighting the country has just got behind it. "

literature

  • Indiana Historical Society: Alexander Gardner: Biographical Sketch . William Henry Smith Memorial Library. Retrieved August 4, 2006.
  • Gardner, Alexander: Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War . Dover Publications, New York 1865. online version images (new edition 1959)
  • Katz, Mark D .: Witness to an Era: The Life and Photographs of Alexander Gardner . Viking Studio Books, New York 1990.

Web links

Commons : Alexander Gardner  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Antietam, Maryland. Allan Pinkerton, President Lincoln, and Major General John A. McClernand: Another View . October 3, 1862. Retrieved June 10, 2013.
  2. ↑ a b Wolf Stadler u. a .: Lexicon of Art 5th Gal - Mr. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, ISBN 3-86070-452-4 , p. 12.
  3. ^ Anthony W. Lee: On Alexander Gardner's photographic sketch book of the Civil War , University of California Press, Berkeley 2007, ISBN 978-0-520-25151-9 .
personal data
SURNAME Gardner, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Paisley , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 1882
Place of death Washington, DC , USA