![]() ![]() ![]() After taking a few images of the town and cemetery the men headed back to Washington probably sometime in the early afternoon. Gardner and his group had traveled some 75 miles from Washington and yet spent only part of the day on the 7th in Gettysburg, taking far fewer images than they had on the previous two days. Burial work had essentially been completed by the night of July 6th. Principal interest in the dead is also evidenced by Gardner’s actions on his final day. He also rearranged and moved the dead (as in the well known instance of the “sharpshooter’s position” in Devil’s Den) to try to ensure appealing shots. ![]() Of the approximately sixty photographs that Gardner took, 75 percent focused on the dead, and 80 percent were in the more marketable stereographic form. From that point on it was a race against Union burial parties to capture images that would sell. Gardner and his fellow photographers Timothy O’Sullivan and James Gibson traveled rapidly from Washington, D.C., probably arriving sometime on the morning of July 5th. He also would have known that smaller stereo images sold best. With his experience at Antietam and the subsequent public reaction to his photographs, he had experience with just how “fascinated” the public was with images of the dead. New stereo images provided these smaller negatives.Īlexander Gardner was the first photographer to arrive at Gettysburg following the battle. To produce smaller, less expensive images a smaller negative needed to be produced. However, reproducing images in varying size from the original negative was still a crude process. The Civil War occurred following innovations in photography that allowed for the mass reproduction of images, making the purchase of war images affordable for the general public. But, on the contrary, there is a terrible fascination about it that draws one near these pictures, and makes him loath to leave them. Of all objects of horror one would think the battle-field should stand preeminent, that it should bear away the palm of repulsiveness. An October 1862 article in The New York Times captured the reaction:Ĭrowds of people are constantly going up the stairs follow them, and you find them bending over photographic views of that fearful battle-field, taken immediately after the action. The public was captivated by these images, which were displayed at Brady’s prominent New York studio. Antietam was the first battle of the war where photographers arrived before burial of the dead had been completed. (The photographs were actually taken by Brady’s assistants Alexander Gardner and James Gibson). While photographs were becoming commonplace, it was not until Matthew Brady’s famous photographic album, “The Dead of Antietam,” that Americans were exposed to the dead of war. For Americans during the Civil War, however, these experiences were novel. Today we take for granted the availability of images displaying the truth of war. Why did these preeminent photographers ignore these potentially powerful subjects? Camp Letterman was also in the process of being established at the time that Brady, the latter of the two to visit Gettysburg, arrived. This is striking in that Union corps field hospitals and twenty-four Confederate field hospitals were present when two prominent groups of photographers, one headed by Matthew Brady and another by Alexander Gardner, made their trips to Gettysburg. ![]() These images are unique in that they are the only known photographs taken of any Gettysburg hospital tents besides those at Camp Letterman, and the only photos of any hospital tents taken in the immediate aftermath of the battle. The first two photographs in this article are by Frederick Gutekunst and were most likely taken sometime between July 9th and 11th, 1863, at the field hospital of the Army of the Potomac’s Second Corps. ![]()
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