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GARDNER, ALEXANDER
GARDNER, ALEXANDER (1821–1882)
American photographer and philanthropist
Born on 17 October 1821 in Paisley, Scotland to James
and Jean Gardner, Gardner was raised in Glasgow,
Scotland by his mother after his father’s death. Jean
(Glenn) Gardner, was from an Ayshire family “of good
standing” whose members included ministers, physi-
cians, and farmers, and she single-handedly saw to the
“training of the family.” As a student, Gardner showed
interest in astronomy, botany, and chemistry. At age
fourteen, he apprenticed with a Glasgow jeweler, where
he worked for the next seven years. During these early
years of his life, he became concerned with the condi-
tion of the working classes and expressed his views on
social issues, as well as on science in art, in the public
press. After leaving the jewelry trade, he worked as the
editor of The Glasgow Sentinel.
Inspired by Robert Owen, Gardner began plan-
ning his own utopia in 1848, writing out the colony’s
“schedule of duties with every minute particular.” Es-
tablished in Iowa by Gardner and his brother in 1850,
the community prospered although Gardner returned
to Scotland. In 1855, he fi nally emigrated to the United
States, taking his mother, his wife, Margaret, and their
two children with him, and they settled in New York.
Mathew B. Brady paid for Gardner’s fare to the United
States though it is not clear why.
While there is a question of whether Gardner was
trained in Scotland or America, his eulogy, printed in
the Philadelphia Photographer in March 1883, suggests
that Gardner’s experiments in photography emerged
from his interest in chemistry in Scotland. Already pos-
sessing knowledge of photography, Gardner was hired
by Mathew B. Brady to manage his new Washington gal-
lery as photographer and bookkeeper. Frequent portrait
sitters at the studio included President Abraham Lincoln,
whom Gardner admired, and Walt Whitman who called
Gardner “mightily my friend” and “a real artist” who
“saw further than his camera.”
With expertise in the wet-plate collodian process (see
wet collodian negative), Gardner became a member of
Brady’s corps of Civil War photographers, which also
included Timothy Henry O’Sullivan and George N.
Barnard. As a photographer for the Union army, Gardner
took three-quarters of the pictures of the Army of the
Potomac’s advance, remaining with General George B.
McClellan during the campaigns in Virginia. Gardner
left Brady’s group, however, in 1863 possibly over is-
sues of authorship of photographs. Gardner then opened
his own gallery in Washington and hired a group of
photographers.
Civil War photographers relied on cumbersome equip-
ment hauled by horse-draw wagons carrying glass col-
lodian, silver nitrate, and developer; photographers used
tents for development. In addition, images required a long
exposure time. Thus, Gardner and others could not capture
images of active battle but captured still landscapes and
scenes of camp life. They made images in stereograph,
cartes-de-visite, and large imperial formats.
Gardner’s photographs also reached the public
through a couple other venues, such as exhibitions and
illustrated publications. Gardner’s photographs of An-
tietam for Brady’s studio, for instance, were exhibited
within a month of the battle. A review in the New York
Times on 20 October 1862 stated that Gardner’s photo-
graphs brought the reality of the war to people’s homes.
Gardner also provided Harper’s Weekly and Leslie’s
Illustrated News with photographs, which they copied
and combined in illustrations for print.
In his two-volume publication, Gardner’s Photo-
graphic Sketch Book of the War of 1866, Gardner had
photographic albums in mind. Each volume contained
fi fty original Civil War photographs by Gardner, some
of which were from his work for Brady. A caption sup-
ports each photograph, with text on the opposite page
describing the scene and its signifi cance. Concerned
with accurate attribution of photographs, Gardner lists
the name of the maker of the negative and the print
below each image.
In introductory remarks, Gardner describes his
Sketch Book photographs as “mementoes of the fearful
struggle” and hopes for their “enduring interest” as war
memorials. While many of the photographs show camp
life and historic events, such as Lincoln’s visit with Mc-
Clellan at Antietam (1862) in Plate 23, the most memo-
rable images depict the ravages of war. Among these
images are Plate 36, “A Harvest of Death” (negative by
T.H. O’Sullivan and positive by A. Gardner) and Plate
94, “A Burial Party on the Battle-Field of Cold Harbor”
(negative by John Reek, positive by A. Gardner). Taken
in Gettysburg, July 1863, “A Harvest of Death,” shows
the strewn bodies of soldiers on a fi eld. Gardner’s text
places war within the natural environment:
Slowly, over the misty fi eld of Gettysburgh—as all reluc-
tant to expose their ghastly horrors to the light—came
the sunless morn, after the retreat by Lee’s broken army.
Through the shadowy vapors, it was, indeed a ‘harvest
of death’ that was presented; hundreds and thousands of
torn Union and rebel soldiers [.. .] strewed the now quiet
fi ghting ground, soaked by the rain, which for two days
had drenched the country with its fi tful showers.In “A Burial Party,” taken on April 1865, Gardner shows
us African Americans, probably soldiers, burying Union
dead. In his text, one can hear Gardner’s unequivocal
support of the Union cause.
Because of the high cost of Gardner’s Sketch Book,
it failed commercially. Nonetheless, Gardner’s career as
a photographer continued to fl ourish with an expedition
in the fall of 1867 to photograph the construction of the
Kansas Pacifi c Railroad, Eastern Division, as it moved