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Volume 4, Issue 2 - December 2006 |
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By Bob Zeller
Published here for the first time is the full-frame stereo view from the original negative of M. B. Brady’s famous image of three Rebel prisoners on Seminary Ridge at Gettysburg, with more foliage than previously known at the top of the image, and more of the scene visible on the left and right. (Gilder-Lehrman Collection. Stereo view aligned by John Richter).
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| Published here for the first time is the full-frame stereo view from the original negative of M. B. Brady’s famous image of three Rebel prisoners on Seminary Ridge at Gettysburg, with more foliage than previously known at the top of the image, and more of the scene visible on the left and right. (Gilder-Lehrman Collection. Stereo view aligned by John Richter). |
Some of the historic stereo photographs that Mathew Brady and his associates took after the battle of Gettysburg, including the iconic view of three Rebel prisoners, show a larger field of view than previously known.
An extraordinarily rare group of 49 unmounted stereo and half-stereo albumen contact prints that exists in the Gilder- Lehrman Collection at the New-York Historical Society establish that Brady’s wartime stereo negatives were larger, and show more, than the Brady stereo negatives at the Library of Congress.
This small, obscure collection, which is online and was first reviewed in early October by Gettysburg historians Timothy H. Smith and William A. Frassanito, includes seven of the some 20 scenes that Brady and his associates took at Gettysburg with their stereo camera.
Among them is a full stereo print of Brady’s “Three Rebel Prisoners at Gettysburg,” one of the most famous and popular photographs of the war. The Gilder-Lehrman print shows more of the scene on the left and right, as well as the top.
The print of the three Rebel prisoners also shows that a piece of tape was affixed to the left hand side of the original negative that reveals a couple of previously unknownfacts: Brady’s original negative number for the image—3932—as well as the original Brady & Co. caption, “Rebel Prisoners Behind their Breast-work.”
This is the full unmounted, uncropped vintage print of Brady’s three Rebel prisoners as it exists in the Gilder-Lehrman Collection. It establishes that the stereo negatives that Brady used during the war were larger than previously thought. (Gilder-Lehrman Collection).
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| This is the full unmounted, uncropped vintage print of Brady’s three Rebel prisoners as it exists in the Gilder-Lehrman Collection. It establishes that the stereo negatives that Brady used during the war were larger than previously thought. (Gilder-Lehrman Collection). |
The 49 images, which include 18 full stereo prints, are identified in the Gilder-Lehrman Collection as having been in the personal collection of one Thomas G. Knight, who was said to have worked in Brady’s studio as a teenager. Although there is no known record of Knight’s affiliation with Brady, there was apparently some connection, given the rarity of these unmounted, uncropped, possibly unique albumen prints, which may well be the only surviving prints drawn from the original glass plate stereo negatives that Brady took at Gettysburg.
In addition to the three Rebel prisoners, the group of prints includes full stereo versions of Brady’s two images of Lee’s headquarters, a half stereo of one of the Culp’s Hill scenes and a half stereo of the woodlot on McPherson’s Ridge and the pond, all of which show more than can be seen in the negatives of these same views at the Library of Congress.
None of the ‘new’ areas shown in the Gettysburg prints reveal any significant, unknown historical information, Frassanito said, but “it is exciting to see the broader look—the entire field of vision that was captured by the camera.”
The additional area in the image of the three Rebel prisoners does, however, dramatically alter the 3D effect of the stereo view. The presence of additional tree branches and leaves at top, as well as the far-greater presence of the wagon bed at left, are significant new foreground elements that change the threedimensional perspective.
The Gilder-Lehrman prints establish that Brady and his associates used 4x10 inch glass stereo negatives in the field at Gettysburg, just as Alexander Gardner did. Brady’s men then printed from the uncut negatives (as did Gardner) and cropped the prints down to about 3x3 before mounting them on stereo view cards.
The Library of Congress negatives of the three Rebel prisoners and Brady’s other Gettysburg views are all about 3x3 inches, and the stereo negative pairs that survive are all separated. But the Gilder-Lehrman prints show that each half of Brady’s original stereo negatives was about 4x5 inches instead of 3x3.
This indicates that the several hundred Brady stereo negatives of war scenes at the Library of Congress are all copy negatives. The copy negatives were created in early 1865 to produce the Photographic History—'War for the Union series of more than 1,000 stereo views published around June 1865 by the E. & H. T. Anthony & Co. For the sake of economy and efficiency, the Anthony company cropped the pictures when it made the copy negatives, producing the glass plates at 3x3 for each stereo half—same as the final print size.
Many or most of the stereo negatives taken in the field by Brady and his associates from 1863 through 1865 were incorporated into the massive Anthony War for the Union series, as was the work of other photographers, such at George Barnard’s Atlanta scenes, T. C. Roche’s death studies at Petersburg and Jacob Coonley’s views from Nashville and other locales. All of War for the Union negatives are uniformly 3x3 inches for each stereo half, which raises the possibility that all are copy negatives, despite their superb clarity and detail.
The Gilder-Lehrman prints “obviously were contact prints made from the original negatives,” Frassanito said. “If not for these prints surfacing, we would have possibly never had access to all of the information in the original negatives, which suggests to me that all of the Brady stereo negatives at the Library of Congress are from a copy series, which means the original, uncut series of negatives is either long gone, or awaiting discovery.”
Smith and Frassanito came upon the collection in early October while Smith was doing online research at the Adams County Historical Society for photographs being considered for the National Park Service’s new visitor’s center at Gettysburg. At Frassanito’s suggestion, Smith was searching for Gettysburg photographs at the Gilder-Lehrman website when he came upon the Gettysburg prints, which he immediately recognized as unusual.
“I said to Bill, ‘Hey, come look at these photographs,’” Smith said. “The one I punched up first was the one at McPherson’s Ridge showing the pond. So I said, “let’s look through every one of them,’ and we went through each of them and saw immediately that some were much larger.”
Besides the Gettysburg scenes, the group of 49 prints includes scenes from Virginia, including Alexandria, Bermuda Hundred and Brandy Station. At least 28 of the images are Brady views that ended up in the War for the Union series, but several appear to be obscure and unpublished images. Several of the prints are not Brady photographs at all, including a print of the famous image of the stone wall at Fredericksburg by Capt. A. J. Russell, and one of Roche’s death studies at Petersburg.
But most are indeed Brady photographs, and at least nine of them are identified with Brady’s original four and five-digit negative numbers in pencil on the reverse. These numbers and images correspond with the same numbers and images listed in Brady & Co’s Catalogue of Photographs and Stereoscopes of Lt. Gen. Grant’s Late Campaign, June 1864, a small catalog preserved at the Library of Congress, and further establish their provenance as very early, wartime original prints.
While the Gilder-Lehrman prints reveal the full surface area in seven of Brady’s Gettysburg photographs and several dozen others, they also serve notice that we may not have seen quite all there is to see in 13 more Brady Gettysburg stereo views, as well as dozens of other Brady images in the field. Perhaps more of these prints will surface someday, or maybe even the original negatives themselves.
You can check out the entire collection at the Gilder- Lehrman website at http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/ index.php Enter the number 03029 in the “GLC Number” field.
By Jason Wickersty
The soldiers in this George Barnard image of an exploded gun in a Confederate battery during the Peninsula Campaign have been identified by author Jason Wickersty as members of the notorious “Lost Children” battalion of New York Zouaves. (Library of Congress).
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| The soldiers in this George Barnard image of an exploded gun in a Confederate battery during the Peninsula Campaign have been identified by author Jason Wickersty as members of the notorious “Lost Children” battalion of New York Zouaves. (Library of Congress). |
Surprises abound throughout the Library of Congress online collection of Civil War photographs, and two images taken by George Barnard in 1862 have revealed members of a notorious unit called the New York Independent Battalion, not previously known to have been photographed.1
The images don’t particularly jump out from the other 7,000 glass plate negatives in the library’s collection, first acquired in 1944 and recently digitized and made available for free on their website. Both are titled “Exploded gun in a Confederate battery” and are very similar in appearance. However, once I downloaded the high-resolution scans and zoomed in to take a closer look, I noticed from a close examination of their distinctive uniforms that the men were none other than the little known New York Independent Battalion.
Recruited from a polyglot of the “roughscuff of New York City,” the battalion was nicknamed “Les Enfants Perdus,” or, “The Lost Children,” after a regiment of French light infantry from the Crimean war, and commanded by Colonel Felix Confort, whose own service in Algeria and the Crimea under General Bosquet earned him the title of chevalier in the Legion d’Honneur.2 The battalion gained considerable attention in the columns of the New York Times and the Irish-American for their distinctive uniform, “an improvement on the well known Zouave costume,” consisting of a triple-breasted chausseur-style jacket trimmed in yellow with a detachable yellow plastron, dark blue chasseur-style trousers with yellow Russian knots at the pockets, white gaiters and jambières, topped with tall kepis adorned with yellow pompons.3 A painting of this first issue uniform appears in Don Troiani’s Regiments and Uniforms of the Civil War.4
Les Enfants spent the first five months of 1862 parading and performing in benefit concerts until Special Order No. 135 of 4 May 1862 ordered them to Gloucester, Virginia to serve as a garrison under Brigadier General James Van Alen.5 One month later, they were photographed by George Barnard, who took two stereo photographs of the unit lounging around an exploded gun in an abandoned Confederate battery, possibly under the former command of General D.H. Hill. Only in theatre for a few weeks, the uniform of the Enfants is already wearing down. Several soldiers have tossed aside their jambières and gaitors, and one soldier resting on the embrasure is wearing an Federal issue forage cap in place of unit’s own kepi and pompon.
The battalion was the bane of any officer who was unfortunate enough to have them under their command. They spent the balance of 1862 and most of the next year being transferred from Yorktown to various posts in the Carolinas before being disbanded at the end of 1863. Lieutenant John Myrick had the last word on the conduct of the Lost Children, a detachment of whom were attached to his Battery E, Third U.S. Artillery at the Battle of Olustee: “I am confident that had I old men in the place of the attached Enfans [sic] Perdus (who took the opportunity to go to the rear when the first two pieces were sent off), I could have got the pieces away.”6
(Footnotes)
1 LC-DIG-cwpb-00176 and LC-DIG-cwpb-01034 from the Library of Congress’ Civil War photograph collection at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/cwphtml/cwpabt.html.
2 Allan Nevins, ed., A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright 1861—1865 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 88.
3 The New York Times, December 3, 1861.
4 Don Troiani, Don Troiani’s Regiments and Uniforms of the Civil War (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 2002), 53.
5 Official Records, Armies, Series I, Volume XI, Part I (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1884), 138.
6 Official Records, Armies, Series I, Volume XXXV, Part I (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1891), 319.
CCWP President Bob Zeller (left) and Civil War Life museum owner Terry Thomann at the entrance to the CCWP’s new exibition.
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| CCWP President Bob Zeller (left) and Civil War Life museum owner Terry Thomann at the entrance to the CCWP’s new exhibition. |
The Center for Civil War Photography on Nov. 2 formally opened an exhibition of original Civil War photographic prints at Civil War Life—The Soldier’s Museum in Fredericksburg, home of the Center’s 3D slide show of Civil War photography.
The exhibition, Classic Photographs of Civil War Virginia—Vintage Prints From Gardner’s Sketchbook, features 17 vintage, original large-plate prints from disbound copies of Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War. It also includes a variety of other wartime and pre-war images, including card photographs, stereo views, cased images and a stereoscopic daguerreotype in a “Mascher” case with a fold-up viewer.
Among the 140-year-old, seven-by-nine inch vintage prints on display are Gardner’s famous image “Studying the Art of War,” as well as Timothy O’Sullivan’s panorama of Fredericksburg while it was still in Confederate hands, and James Gibson’s landscape of the ruins of the Norfolk Navy Yard. Museum owners Terry and Jane Thomann had an extra room, CCWP President Bob Zeller had a collection of loose prints from Gardner’s Sketchbook, and thus was born the exhibition, which was co-curated by Zeller and Thomann, and jointly sponsored by CCWP and the museum.
“To see familiar images of the war in their original presentation format is to see them in a whole, new way,” Zeller writes in the exhibition’s introductory text. “The actual panes of glass that were in the cameras on the battlefields of Virginia, exposed to the sun as they faced these unforgettably historic scenes, were put in physical touch with each of the paper prints on display here.”
The exhibition augments the many other Civil War artifacts and relics on display at the museum and gift shop. It also compliments the museum’s unique and unforgettable 3D slide show of Civil War photographs, a 20- minute program owned and produced by CCWP in which patrons wear theme park-style 3D glasses to see the war’s greatest photos in their original, breathtaking 3D format.
One of the Center’s key projects in 2007 is upgrading the 3D show to a digital format, eliminating the need for slides. Board member John Richter is heading this effort and procuring the necessary computer hardware and software to make it work.
CCWP, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, receives a sizeable portion of museum fees. The museum is located in the Southpark complex just west of Exit 126 on I-95 in Spotsylvania County. For more specific directions and more information please visit http://civilwar-life.com/ or contact the Civil War Life Museum at 540.834.1859.
By Bob Zeller
With Keith Knoke providing the commentary and CCWP Vice President Garry Adelman showing images, seminar patrons gather next to a marshy spot near the Bull Run Battlefield Visitor’s Center where Brady photographers took images of makeshift battlefield graves in March 1862. (Photograph by Bob Zeller).
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| With Keith Knoke providing the commentary and CCWP Vice President Garry Adelman showing images, seminar patrons gather next to a marshy spot near the Bull Run Battlefield Visitor’s Center where Brady photographers took images of makeshift battlefield graves in March 1862. (Photograph by Bob Zeller). |
Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer opened the Lincoln family photograph album during his banquet speech at the sixth annual Image of War seminar at Manassas, Va., on Sept. 16, and floored the audience with the revelation that it included a carte de visite photograph of John Wilkes Booth.
The illustrated lecture by Holzer, senior vice president for external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, included other visual delights as well, such as a photograph of Robert Lincoln teeing off during a round of golf at Ekwanok County Club in Manchester, Vermont, not far from Hildene, the Lincoln family estate.
The album was rediscovered at Hildene in 1984 and revealed in The Lincoln Family Album by Holzer and Mark E. Neely (Doublday, 1990). The book has been republished by Southern Illinois University Press and was released Nov. 15. Holzer’s illustrated talk was one of many highlights of another jam-packed seminar that took in Bull Run, Washington, D.C. and Brandy Station in one ambitious weekend.
On Friday evening, CCWP Vice President Garry Adelman and Richmond historian Mike Gorman tossed the microphone back and forth during their Capitals at War presentation, while Wally Owen revisited Alexandria through Capt. A. J. Russell’s camera. In our late, late show, Jason Wickersty presented a highly imaginative talk that featured the constant appearance, in image after image from the spring of 1865, of a lens-hogging civilian. Wickersty nicknamed him “The Woo Guy.”
On Saturday evening, in addition to Holzer’s presentation, CCWP President Bob Zeller, with production assistance from board member John Richter, presented Washington and northern Virginia in 3D, with striking ‘new’ stereo images of Harewood Hospital and the Grand Review.
In the field on Saturday, our group of about 60 visited Brady’s Studio on Pennsylvania Avenue, where Rob Gibson gutted through the pain of an injured back from a recent automobile accident as well as temporarily closed and blocked streets to give us a wet plate demonstration in the plaza below the huge skylight window that still exists on the fourth floor of the original studio building,.
The seminar also took in Ford’s Theater, the Lincoln cottage and Soldier’s Home as well as Fort Stevens, scene of the 1864 battle that Lincoln witnessed from the parapet.
The attendees at the 2006 Image of War seminar gather at the rear of Brady’s original studio building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. as CCWP director Rob Gibson sets up the annual group wet plate photograph. The original Brady studio skylight is visible on the fourth floor. (Photograph by Bob Zeller).
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| The attendees at the 2006 Image of War seminar gather at the rear of Brady’s original studio building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. as CCWP director Rob Gibson sets up the annual group wet plate photograph. The original Brady studio skylight is visible on the fourth floor. (Photograph by Bob Zeller). |
On Sunday morning. Bull Run researcher and historian Keith Knoke showed us his exciting discoveries of the locations of the key battlefield photographs taken in March 1862. One of the locations—the marshy spot where George Barnard and James Gibson made a pair of stereo views showing soldiers’ battlefield graves, is just a few yards from the Visitor’s Center parking lot, and was just as wet and marshy when we saw it as it was in 1862.
Sunday afternoon’s optional tours included a fascinating tour of the still pristine, untouched landscape that is the Brandy Station battlefield by local resident, expert and battlefield preservation leader Clark “Bud” Hall, who met us at the Graffiti House, a surviving building at Brandy Station whose walls are covered with Civil War graffiti and drawings.
The Center operates its annual seminar on a tight budget designed to provide the greatest value to our attendees, but we do also try to net some proceeds for our non-profit organization. Traditionally, our annual Saturday night raffle puts us over the top, and it was no different this year. On the strength of some fine original Civil War photographs and many other items, the raffle generated a record $1,560, balanced the seminar budget and gave us additional proceeds totaling about $600.
The Center for Civil War Photography again helped sponsor the Civil War Preservation Trust’s annual photo contest. Deadline for 2006 entries was Nov. 30.
Amateur photographers were invited to submit Civil War-related photos in six different categories, including Then and Now, a category sponsored by CCWP. Other categories were (1) Endangered Battlefields, featuring a battlefield under threat of destruction; (2) Scenic, showing the natural beauty of Civil War sites; (3) Historic, capturing the solemn effect of a historic structure or monument; (4) Close-up, examining a detail of a monument or landscape; (5) Junior Photographer, a special category for photographers under the age of 18.
The 2006 grand prize winner is to be selected from among the first place winners in the six categories, and will receive a free registration (a $515 value) to CWPT’s annual conference. The History Channel will award $250 to the remaining first place winners in each category. Second and third place winners are eligible for CWPT merchandise and gift certificates. The winner of the “Then and Now” category will receive a free registration to Center for Civil War Photography’s 2007 Image of War seminar.
Paul Ashworth of Cincinnati, Ohio, won first prize in the CCWP-sponsored Then and Now category of the 2005 CWPT amateur photo contest for his image of Lee and Gordon’s Mill at Chickamauga, Ga.
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| Paul Ashworth of Cincinnati, Ohio, won first prize in the CCWP-sponsored Then and Now category of the 2005 CWPT amateur photo contest for his image of Lee and Gordon’s Mill at Chickamauga, Ga. |
Cape Fear Museum Features Civil War Photos
The Chrysler Museum’s Civil War photograph exhibition of prints from the David L. Hack Collection, which recently closed at the Norfolk museum, will hit the road in 2007 with a visit to the Cape Fear Museum at 814 Market Street in Wilmington, N.C.
The exhibition of 50 vintage, original prints from a number of different photographers will be at the coastal Carolina museum from Feb. 15 to May 28. In conjunction with the exhibition, CCWP President Bob Zeller will present his “Best Photos of the Civil War in 3-D” show at the Cape Fear Museum on the evening of May 8.
Gardner’s Sketchbook Commands $86,250 At Auction
A copy of the two-volume Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War, with a detached Vol. II cover, sold for $86,250, including buyer’s premium, at Wes Cowan’s Americana Auction in Cincinnati on Nov. 16, which was chocked full of great Civil War images. The pre-auction estimate for this rare book of 100 albumen large-plate prints (only about 200 copies were made of the twovolume set) was $50,000-60,000. Other highlights include:
- A sixth-plate ambrotype of Gen. Ambrose Burnside, estimated at $5,000-10,000, was snatched up for $4,025.
- An album of Morgan’s Raiders, with 50 Confederate cartes de visites, mostly identified officers, estimated at $25,000-35,000, went for a staggering $86,250, or $1,725 per CDV! Cowan called it the finest Confederate CDV album he’d ever handled.
- Two large format prints of Morgan’s Raiders confined at Camp Douglas prisoner of war camp in Illinois, estimated at $2,000- 3,000, went for $7,475.
- A somewhat soiled Gardner’s Gallery stereo view No. 265 of the Slaughter Pen at Gettysburg, estimated at $300-500, commanded an impressive $920.
A Feast for the Eyes
Bored? Looking for something new and interesting on the Internet? Check out these other Gilder-Lehrman collections of Civil War photographs at www.gilderlehrman.org. Just type the call number in the search field on the home page and keep clicking until you get to the images.
GLC03919: Nine Confederate stereo views of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie in April 1861 by Osborn and Durbec.
GLC04509: A remarkable, possibly one-of-a-kind collection of cartes de visite of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in April 1861 issued by Osborn’s gallery.
GLC05111: A massive collection of some 2,800 Civil War photographs, many of them available for online viewing.
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