Gardner was born in Paisley, Scotland in 1821. He was raised in Glasgow, working as a jeweler’s apprentice in his teens and becoming the editor of the Glasgow Sentinel in 1851. That same year he visited the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London where he saw displays of photographs, including those by American Matthew Brady. In 1855 Gardner began offering his services as a photographer.
During the 1850s Gardner was also involved in establishing a utopian cooperative in the United States. The group purchased land in Iowa in 1850 and formed a colony. Gardner did not move his family to the U. S. until 1856 -- by that time the Iowa community had foundered. Gardner remained in New York and soon began working for Matthew Brady in his Manhattan studio.
The Brady Years
Brady specialized in studio photography, making portraits of statesmen, literary giants and the scions of society. His early portraits were daguerreotypes. Gardner introduced Brady to the new wet-collodion glass plate negative process that made multiple reproductions possible of the same image. Gardner also devised a method of enlarging prints up to 17 by 21 inches. He called these oversize prints “Imperials.” They became one of the biggest profit generators for Brady’s studio.
Brady opened a studio in Washington, D. C. in 1858, installing Gardner as manager. Gardner continued to attract clientele with his handsomely produced imperial portraits, but soon recognized the sales potential for the carte de visite format, a small, affordable photographic calling card first popularized in France.
At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 Brady dispatched a group of over 20 photographers including Gardner, Timothy O’Sullivan and George Barnard to document the conflict. Brady did little of the actual field photography himself. He did not credit photographers in his employ, a practice that was customary at the time.
Gardner made powerful images of the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, including the bodies of fallen soldiers. Although the Mexican and the Crimean Wars had been documented photographically, this was the first time a battlefield had been photographed before the dead were buried.
In October of 1862, Brady exhibited a selection of Gardner’s graphic images entitled “The Dead of Antietam” in his New York gallery, bringing the realities of warfare to the American public. The exhibit was a success, attracting large crowds and garnering acclaim for Brady.
Civil War Photographs
Gardner left Brady’s studio about a month later. By May of 1863 he had set up “Gardner’s Gallery” on 7th and D Streets in Washington, D. C. with his brother James. He hired a group of photographers, including former Brady associates, to record the remaining battles as well as the burnt-out ruins of Richmond. Gardner’s photographers kept meticulous notes on the approximately 3,000 negatives they took of the war.
At Gettysburg, Gardner photographed a dead Confederate soldier in the Devil’s Den, a rocky section of the battlefield where fierce fighting raged. The image, later captioned “Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter,” was staged. Careful study by Civil War experts revealed that Gardner moved the body, positioning it more dramatically for the camera. Although such manipulations are an unacceptable breach of journalistic ethics by modern standards, contemporary expectations were different.
Gardner’s bleak views of Richmond -- black-clad women in rubble-strewn streets and the hulking shells of fire-ravaged buildings -- have a modern sensibility. They foreshadow photographs of European cities bombed in WWII.
Photographing Lincoln
Gardner photographed Lincoln at Antietam and in his studio on several occasions, taking more pictures of the president than any other photographer. Of note are the unusual face-on portrait taken in 1863 and several portraits taken in February of 1865.
After Lincoln’s assassination, Gardner’s publisher claimed these were the last photographs of the martyred president, an assertion that became widely accepted. Although recent scholarship has shown they are not Lincoln’s last portraits, the remarkably candid expression of the war-weary leader gives them lasting value.
Gardner covered the president’s funeral and was the only photographer allowed to record the hanging of the assassins. He captured the spectacle -- the crowd, the officials readying the nooses and the four hooded prisoners swaying from the gallows. Prior to their execution, Gardner created character studies of the conspirators. The haunting images of Lewis Paine leaning against the rough metal of the ironclad where he was imprisoned are among Gardner’s best portraits.
Over 50 years later, sculptor Daniel Chester French used Gardner’s 1863 face-on portrait of Lincoln to carve the statue for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.
Publishing a Milestone Civil War Book
In 1865 and 1866, he published editions of his groundbreaking book Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War, a two-volume set with a total of 100 hand-mounted original albumen silver prints accompanied by printed text. Arranged chronologically, the book covered important incidents from Col. Ellsworth’s murder at Marshall House in 1861 to the dedication of the Bull Run Battlefield monument in 1865.
Gardner credited the photographer of each image. James Gardner, Timothy O’Sullivan, George Barnard, James Gibson, John Reekie and William Pywell were among the 11 contributors. Renowned Harper’s Weekly artist Alfred R. Waud designed and illustrated the title page of the book.
The Post-War Years
In 1867 Gardner systematically photographed the construction of the transcontinental railroad through Kansas. These important early documents of the American West became part of the series Across the Continent on the Kansas Pacific Railroad.
The following year, he was named official photographer of the Fort Laramie Treaty. Gardner recorded views of tribal life on the Northern Plains, later publishing a number of the images as bound portfolios entitled Scenes in the Indian Country.
In 1870, Gardner returned to Washington, D. C. and resumed his work photographing Native American delegations visiting the city, a project he continued until 1880.
Gardner devoted his later years to philanthropy. He died in 1882 at the age of 61, leaving behind a body of photographs that, as he “confidently hoped” in the introduction to his Sketchbook, remain of “enduring interest.”
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