Alexander Gardner was one of three photographers who “documented” the American Civil War with collodion photography, a new type of photographic process that used glass negatives. Advantages of this photographic process were that the images were clear and crisp and that the negative was durable and could be used to make countless prints. A disadvantage was that the exposure time was typically several seconds long, so the photographer could not capture an instant.
(Pinkerton, who was head of Union Intelligence Services during the war, foiled an assassination attempt against Lincoln and went on to pioneer the American private detective industry.)
Because of the exposure times of collodion negatives, Civil War photographers like Gardner took images of the aftermath of battles, at times arranging and rearranging corpses within their compositions. Of course, this rather common practice calls into question the accuracy of these photographs as documents of the Civil War, but are they true in any sense?
Alexander Gardner, Allan Pinkerton, President Abraham Lincoln and Major General John A. McClernand in Antietam, Maryland, 1862, photograph, Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, 1977. No. 0147, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Alexander Gardner, Bodies of Confederate dead gathered for burial after the Battle of Antietam, September 1862, photograph, Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, reproduction number LC-DIG-cwpb-01094, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Alexander Gardner, Photograph of the field at Antietam, Dead by a fence at the Hagerstown Turnpike, looking north; the Turnpike is to the right of the fence, the dirt lane on the left leads to the farm of David Miller, Washington, D.C., From the Library of Congress’ American Memory collection; original location: http://memory.loc.gov/ndlpcoop/nhnycw/ad/ad18/ad18045v.jpg, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Alexander Gardner, Dead by the Church, 1862, photograph, Alexander Gardner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Alexander Gardner, Lincoln’s Funeral on Pennsylvania Avenue, April 19, 1865, , Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, reproduction number LC-BH823- 145, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
