On Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War (review)

Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War, published in 1866, was the first photographically illustrated book on the American Civil War. It is a cornerstone of photography books, and within those books produced in America, it is peerless. Thus, it is surprising that there has never been a publication that considers its importance until now. This publication is the first to give the Sketch Book full consideration. It is a welcome and enlightening analysis with incisive essays by art historian, Anthony W. Lee, and literary scholar, Elizabeth Young.

Gardner’s Sketch Book was published in two volumes, with fifty hand-mounted albumen photographs in each book. A page of text written by Alexander Gardner accompanied each photograph. Although primarily a picture book, its text was an integral element of the overall presentation. For each print, Gardner carefully attributed the maker of the negative and the positive. The book tells the story, primarily of the eastern theater, of the war as conceptualized by Gardner. The selection and sequencing of the photographs, authorship of the text, and marketing of the book at the princely sum of $150 was all the genius of Alexander Gardner. Since it was a commercial failure, maybe the price wasn’t genius—but the book certainly was.

The book covers the basics of how Civil War photographers operated in the field. It discusses the complexity of the photographic process and compares the role of the photographer with that of the sketch artist, who was also making a record of the war. It analyzes how sketch artists realize their imagery as opposed to how the photographer realizes his. While the technical limitations prevented the recording of actual battle scenes, photography could preserve in minute detail what a scene looked like where an awful occurrence had taken place. Today these qualities of photography are well-known, but at the time they were new concepts.

Gardner photographed Lincoln more than twice as many times as any other photographer and made some of the most memorable, graceful poses of the president. Anthony Lee makes an expansive case for Gardner’s peculiar representation of Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, when Gardner began assembling the book, Lincoln’s assassination was undoubtedly still a raw memory. Yet in the book he chose a stiff standing image of Lincoln at Antietam. Strangely, Gardner made no mention of his assassination. Lee suggests that Gardner was not making a memorial to Lincoln but a view of the war—a view in which Lincoln and all other major personalities represented were part of a larger panorama. “Gardner . . . wanted to visualize the war and make that visualization central to its telling. The view was the new mode and carried a professional meaning—more institution, more weighty, more national, more legitimate—as the photographer tried to make a place for his craft” (16). Lee brilliantly points out that Gardner was not only creating a record of the war as he perceived it but also making a case for the importance of photography and the photographer.

Literary critic Elizabeth Young begins her analysis of the texts by pointing out that their lengths range from 115 to 650 words. Much too long to be considered merely captions, they are texts or, as she terms them, “literary sketches.” For the first time these texts are given critical consideration as an equal partner to the photographs. She effectively argues that the Sketch Book should be interpreted “as a work of writing as well as image making.” She provides analysis on several image and word combinations, including African Americans and President Lincoln. In what might be a bit of a stretch, she offers erotic implications on some of the pairings. Overall, this book proves to be a groundbreaking new study on Gardner’s landmark Sketch Book.