Alexander Gardner photo
Library of Congress
In this September 1863 image of war correspondents working for the New York Herald, Alexander Gardner makes a rare appearance in one of his studio’s images. Gardner, who had started working for Mathew Brady and now had his own studio—and his own fame—is seated at right. His face cannot be seen, but Gardner can be identified by his hat, his distinctive beard, and his hands and fingernails, which are blackened by the silver nitrate used in the process of preparing and developing glass plate negatives.
Timothy O’Sullivan, who worked for Gardner, made this and several other images of Herald headquarters and correspondents in the field at Bealeton, Virginia. The Herald, with an 1861 readership of 84,000, advertised itself as the “most largely circulated journal in the world,” and had at least 40 correspondents in the field during the Civil War, with one assigned to each division of the Army of the Potomac.
On November 8, just months after this image was made, Gardner would take his famous “Gettysburg Portrait” of Abraham Lincoln—one of the best-known wartime images of the president—days before Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address.
Bob Zeller is president of the nonprofit Center for Civil War Photography, which is devoted to collecting, preserving, and digitizing Civil War images.
