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Volume 1, Issue 1 - July 2003 |
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A New Window on the Wilderness Battlefield Stereograph of Wilderness Battlefield taken late 1865 or early 1866 by Baltimore photographer G. O. Brown.
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| A New Window on the Wilderness BattlefieldStereograph of Wilderness Battlefield taken late 1865 or early 1866 by Baltimore photographer G. O. Brown. |
One bit of magic about Civil War photography is the number of unpublished, previously unknown photographs that continue to come to light in our time. It's as if we can send the photographers back to the battlefields to make just one more image; one more remarkable window into our history. Our aim at the Center for Civil War Photography is to unveil a previously unpublished Civil War photograph in each edition of the newsletter. And in our inaugural newsletter, we are pleased to publish for the first time a magnificent scene from the Wilderness battlefield by Baltimore photographer G. O. Brown. Bob Zeller acquired this stereoview in an eBay auction in October 2001. It is split down the middle in two halves, but neither print of the stereoview is affected. Zeller realized this image was not among the known Brown images, so he sent a reproduction to the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, where Superintendent John Hennessy, who is also a historian, confirmed that it was an unknown image of the battlefield.
I can tell you that we do not have this photo in our collection and have not seen it published anywhere else, Hennessy wrote in an e-mail. It's similar to others of the Wilderness, but appears to be new. Pretty good deal!
The original handwritten caption on the back of the view says: View in the woods in front of Rebl. Genl. A. P Hill's artillery showing the affect of shot and shell inside the Union lines.
The vivid image shows some of the battle-damaged trees in the thickets of the Wilderness. In the distance is a delivery wagon. It probably is not Brown's portable darkroom wagon, because that wagon clearly shows in another stereoview and this is not the same vehicle. Note that the lower legs of this wagon's horses are hidden by the Union entrenchments. The view is not numbered, but the handwriting on the caption is identical to other known prints from the series, which was made by Brown in late 1865 or early 1866 when he visited Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Chancellorsville. So far, less than half of the potential Brown stereoviews have been identified. The numbering system in the 15 vintage, original Brown stereoviews in the Robin Stanford collection range from 3 to 99, but no more than 40 are known to exist. Perhaps time will unearth more of the groundbreaking work of this little-known photographer.
The dean of Civil War photohistorians, William A. Frassanito, will give a rare, personal tour of Devil's Den as The Center for Civil War Photography returns to Gettysburg for the third annual Image of War seminar August 29-31.
Frassanito will talk about the famous photographs taken in and around Devil's Den by Alexander Gardner and his associates in the days after the battle and how his intensive research on those images has shed new light on the battle and battlefield.
Frassanito's appearance at the seminar marks his first public presentation in two years. If you've never heard him speak, we can assure you he's one of the best. Frassanito located most of the original camera positions of the Gettysburg wartime photographs and revealed them in his classic Gettysburg, A Journey in Time, first published in 1975 and now offered by Thomas Publications. Some of the most famous photographs of the entire Civil War, such as that of the Dead Sharpshooter, were recorded at Devil's Den and Frassanito will give the complete story of these views.
The seminar will also feature special tours inside Gibson's Gallery, the Evergreen Cemetery Gatehouse, the Leister House (General Meade's Headquarters) and the Bryan Farm. There will be indoor and outdoor joint presentations by Garry Adelman and Timothy Smith (both licensed Gettysburg battlefield guides), including a tour of Culp's Hill. The annual Saturday night banquet will feature an all-Gettysburg 3-D Civil War photography slide lecture by Bob Zeller.
This all-new show features the wartime stereo photographs taken on the battlefield by Alexander Gardner and Mathew Brady, as well as many stunning post-war stereo images and several then-and-now shots, including a remarkable sequence of four images showing the sharpshooter's nest at Devil's Den in 3-D as it evolved over 140 years.
Sign up now for the 3rd annual Image of War, which returns to Gettysburg for the 140th anniversary of the battle. For more information, call Garry Adelman at (301) 528-2825 or e-mail him at
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A controversial new book, Gettysburg Battlefield: The Definitive Illustrated History (Chronicle Books, 2003) by David J. Eicher, uses dozens of historical photos scanned from the pages of two landmark books by William A. Frassanito.
Frassanito presents a detailed assessment of the situation in his critical analysis, which follows.
This critical analysis of David J. Eicher's Gettysburg Battlefield: The Definitive Illustrated History will focus primarily on what is arguably the backbone of his definitive illustrated history, namely his photographic presentation, and especially on the magnitude to which that presentation and its supportive captions were based upon my two pioneering studies, Gettysburg: A Journey in Time (Scribner, 1975; Thomas reprint, 1996) and Early Photography at Gettysburg (Thomas, 1995).
My review of Gettysburg Battlefield quickly evolved into a laborious forensic investigation once I began to come across the first of literally dozens of historical photographs that Mr. Eicher secured not from the sources he credited, but instead by scanning them -- without my knowledge and without my permission -- from the copyright-protected pages of my books. Thus far I can prove with absolute certainty that at least 36 of the historical photos in Gettysburg Battlefield were scanned from my photo prints (most custommade) as they appear in Gettysburg: A Journey in Time (18) and Early Photography at Gettysburg (18), with six more probables, making a total of at least 42, or fully 25% of the historical Gettysburg photographs in Mr. Eicher¹s book. (I suspect that the actual count is substantially higher.)
For example, the fact that his photo of Little Round Top on pp. 166-167 of Gettysburg Battlefield was scanned from pg. 308 of my Early Photography at Gettysburg is evidenced by the series of telltale, parallel vertical streaks (denoting the lines of text from my reverse pg. 307) which appear across the sky in his reproduction. In a number of instances, Mr. Eicher scanned photos from my books that I had copied from rare originals in private collections. Not knowing how to credit these images without revealing his true source, he arbitrarily assigned them to government collections, obviously never checking to see whether these collections actually had the images (they don't). He was likewise completely unaware of the fact that many of the photos he was scanning contain obscure but distinguishing characteristics that are unique to my custom prints.
Apprised of my irrefutable findings, Mr. Eicher's publisher, Chronicle Books, recently informed me that Dave Eicher acknowledges that he included images from your book in his. But according to Chronicle, this was perfectly legal because All historical images of the Civil War are in the public domain, and are in the public domain regardless of the source. Incredible! But whatever the legal technicalities may be, I consider all of the dozens of photos in Gettysburg Battlefield that were surreptitiously reproduced from the pages of my copyrighted books to be the equivalent of stolen property, especially given the enormous effort and expense that I devoted to securing all of those images legitimately.
A well-known hallmark of my published studies are their original then & now pairs, with my two books containing a total of more than 150 pairs, many of which took literally years of original research to produce. Of the 89 then & now pairs in Mr. Eicher's book, fully 94% (84/89) are simply duplications (or at least attempted duplications) of what he found in my Gettysburg:A Journey in Time (61) and Early Photography at Gettysburg (23). Employing my books as his trusty and easy-to-follow guides, it took him all of three days (6/8/97, 8-21 & 22/00) to conduct his systematic and wholesale duplication of my many years of work. Ironically, of the only five then & now pairs actually original to Mr. Eicher's book, all five are flawed.
In his preface, Mr. Eicher boasts that his captions provide a great amount of information on the historic images that early photographers created.... If Mr. Eicher had been as meticulous about citing my two books as his sources of photo-related information as he was obsessive about crediting himself for each and every individual modern photo (see pg. 296), he could easily have included well over 100 footnotes to Gettysburg: A Journey in Time and Early Photography at Gettysburg in his captions. Instead, his historical photo presentation doesn¹t include any footnotes, unlike his fairly routine battle narrative, which includes some 140 (many of which were unnecessary).
Despite the sheer magnitude of Mr. Eicher's reliance on my two original studies for the production of his historical photo presentation, nowhere throughout his entire book is either Gettysburg: A Journey in Time or Early Photography at Gettysburg ever mentioned as the source for a single historical photograph, a single then & now pair, a single caption, a single photographer attribution, or a single date. Clearly Mr. Eicher wanted the names of my two books -- his bibles -- and the crucial roles they played,to remain as obscure as possible (while at times mentioning my name with praise, typically as either a generic source of inspiration, or as the generic source for an occasional fact), thereby leaving the unsuspecting reader with the erroneous impression that the historical photo presentation in Gettysburg Battlefield is primarily his work, and essentially original to his book.
I must also call attention to the misleading title of Gettysburg Battlefield: The Definitive Illustrated History, for there is nothing about Mr. Eicher's book that can claim to be "The Definitive" anything. The photo presentation itself is riddled with factual errors, especially when Mr. Eicher is on his own. The most bizarre example of the latter is his reproduction of a May 1864 photo of Fredericksburg, Va., to illustrate the Railroad Cut at Gettysburg (pg. 47). Almost 20 of the photos he has dated from 1861-1865 are actually postwar, several as late as the 1880s, and one as late as the 1890s. He even displays a remarkable ignorance concerning a number of historical photos he correctly identifies as postwar, but otherwise misdates. For example, he seems clueless about the well-known background behind William Tipton's famous series taken in the spring of 1882 for the cyclorama of Pickett's Charge, Mr. Eicher being unsure about the identity of the photographer, not mentioning why the photos were taken, and dating the two examples he reproduces as "ca. 1870s" (pg. 224). A key claim made by Mr. Eicher in his preface is that "In compiling the photographs for the book, I have attempted to include all historical images of the Gettysburg battlefield made during the Civil War years themselves, 1861-1865."
Apparently this unfinished statement was intended to mislead the reader into believing that his book contains virtually all of the early photos recorded at Gettysburg. Of the at least 40 photographic scenes taken at Gettysburg from 1861-1865 that Mr. Eicher failed to include (most of which have been published in my several studies, listed below), I can convincingly establish that Mr. Eicher never even "attempted" to include most of them. And, as those individuals who are familiar with my studies will notice, Mr. Eicher's historical photo presentation doesn't include a single new discovery of significance. The only truly definitive presentation on the early photographic coverage of the Gettysburg battlefield remains the multi-volume series comprised of Gettysburg: A Journey in Time and Early Photography at Gettysburg, supplemented by two magazine-format publications, Gettysburg Then & Now (Thomas, 1996) and The Gettysburg Then & Now Companion (Thomas, 1997).
Although quality-control issues likewise abound in Mr. Eicher's book, such as the presence of a surprising number of blurry historical photos and the reproduction of numerous photos in an almost postage-stamp-sized format, etc., etc., it is the manner in which his historical photo presentation was put together that should be of alarming concern to all serious students of the Civil War. Certainly the unacknowledged, systematic, and wholesale duplication of someone else's original work, and the portrayal of that work as if original to the duplicator; the clandestine acquisition of photographs from copyrighted publications; and the deceptive manipulation of photo credits, are all disreputable practices that should be condemned.
The Center for Civil War Photography has issued a consumer alert advising Civil War book buyers of serious ethical problems with the historical photographs presented in Gettysburg Battlefield – The Definitive Illustrated History by David J. Eicher, which was released in May by Chronicle Books.
Dozens of historical photographs reproduced in Gettysburg Battlefield were scanned directly from the pages of William A. Frassanito's two pioneering studies, Gettysburg: A Journey in Time (Scribner, 1975; Thomas reprint, 1996) and Early Photography at Gettysburg (Thomas, 1995), without any credit to those two books. Many of these photographs are part of a "then-and-now" presentation, 94 percent of which (84 of 89) simply duplicate original then-and-now pairs in Frassanito's books, without credit.
Chronicle acknowledges that Eicher scanned photographs from Frassanito's books and reproduced them in Gettysburg Battlefield, but asserts that their book does not infringe on the copyrights of Frassanito's books because "all historical images of the Civil War are in the public domain, and are in the public domain regardless of the source."
Regardless of legalities, the Center for Civil War Photography asserts that it is an irresponsible and unethical practice for any historian, author, journalist or publisher to reproduce historical photographs that are scanned from others' books without identifying them as such, without securing permission and without properly and fully crediting the source.
The act of creating a halftone reproduction from a scan of an existing halftone in a book causes a severe degradation in quality, as evidenced by the poor quality and the muddy, indistinct appearance of many historical photographs in Gettysburg Battlefield. Most Civil War copy photographs yield sharp and clear reproductions because the original images were captured on large glass negatives. It is a disservice to the clarity and detail of Civil War photography to reproduce images scanned from books rather than obtaining and using quality copies from primary sources.
The Center for Civil War Photography encourages historians, authors, journalists and publishers to support and employ ethical and scholarly standards in the reproduction of Civil War photographs in the media. This includes obtaining legitimate copy images from the owners of the original negatives or vintage, original prints; abiding by any rules or regulations set forth by the owner(s), including the payment of publication fees; and fully and properly crediting the actual source of the reproduction. The Center's board of directors unanimously concurs with Mr. Frassanito's concluding sentence in his critical analysis of Gettysburg Battlefield: "Certainly the unacknowledged, systematic, and wholesale duplication of someone else's original work, and the portrayal of that work as if original to the duplicator; the clandestine acquisition of photographs from copyrighted publications; and the deceptive manipulation of photo credits, are all disreputable practices that should be condemned."
President Bob Zeller
Bob Zeller pioneered the modern presentation of stereoscopic Civil War photography with The Civil War in Depth (Chronicle Books, 1997), the first 3-D photo history of the war, and with his 3-D slide lectures. Bob, who is a writer, journalist and historian, spent 23 years in newspaper journalism, specializing in investigative reporter and later working as a motorsports beat writer covering NASCAR. Bob is a native of Washington, D.C. who has published seven books. He is one of the leading private collectors of original Civil War photography. Bob lives outside Greensboro, N.C, with his wife, Ann.
Vice-President Garry E. Adelman
Chicago-area native Garry Adelman is a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg who has spent thousands of hours studying Civil War battlefields. Garry earned his M.A. in history at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania in 2002. He is the author of The Myth of Little Round Top (2003), The Early Gettysburg Battlefield (2001), Little Round Top: A Detailed Tour Guide (2000), and co-author of Devil's Den: A History and Guide (1997, all Thomas Publications). A frequent lecturer at Civil War Round Tables, he has also appeared on the History Channel. Garry works for History Associates, Inc., and lives outside of Washington, D.C. with his wife, Jennifer.
Secretary-Treasurer and Development Director Charles G. Morrongiello
Chuck Morrongiello is a well-established and successful financial representative for Northwestern Mutual Financial Network. In his 18 years with the company's Teague Agency in Tampa, Florida, he has been Agent of the Year six times and has won several National Quality Awards from the National Association of Life Underwriters. He is also a life member of the Million Dollar Round Table. He has been a Civil War enthusiast since his dad took him to Gettysburg as a youngster and today is an avid collector of Civil War memorablia and art. He lives in Tampa.
Director Rob Gibson
"Watching Rob Gibson work is like looking over the shoulder of Mathew Brady," says Mary Panzer, former Curator of Photographs at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. It is no exaggeration. Gibson is more than just a wet-plate photographer committed to authenticity. He's an artist. A former engineer with General Motors in his native Rochester, N.Y., Rob taught himself the craft of wet-plate photography and moved to Gettysburg in 1999 to open his own wet-plate studio, Gibson's Photographic Gallery. Rob has appeared on CSPAN, PBS, the History Channel and the A&E network and was the exclusive wet-plate photographer for the movie Gods and Generals.
Director Rob Gibson played John Wilkes Booth in the Triangle Production April 1865, which appeared in April 2003 on the History Channel. (Wet plate photo by Gibson’s Gallery).
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| Director Rob Gibson played John Wilkes Booth in the Triangle Production April 1865, which appeared in April 2003 on the History Channel. (Wet plate photo by Gibson’s Gallery). |
Imagine a small but intimate theater with surround sound and a wide silver screen. The comfortable seats provide a welcome respite from a hot summer day of touring a nearby Civil War battlefield. The lights go down, and as the state-of-the-art 3-D digital video begins, viewers are instantly transported into a 3-D world of Civil War history. Many of the scenes are familiar. These are some of the most famous photographs of the Civil War. But they do not look like they do in books. The images come alive in 3-D. As patrons watch through 3-D glasses, they feel as if they're actually a part of these Civil War scenes, moving from side to side and back and forth within actual Civil War tableaus. In another instant, a historic scene morphs into a modern 3-D view of the same spot more than 140 years later—the ultimate then-and-now comparison.
This is the future of the Center for Civil War Photography, and although our goal of establishing a permanent facility and 3-D theater is still a dream, we believe that with patience, perseverance and persistence, that dream is well within our reach. In the spring of 2003, the Center began working with Civil War Life – The Soldiers’ Museum, in Fredericksburg, Va., to get a Center for Civil War Photography 3-D slide show up and running at their temporary location next to the Spotsylvania County Visitors Center off Exit 126 of Interstate 95. The organization is building a permanent museum near Spotsylvania Courthouse that is scheduled to open in 2004 and the Center is planning to provide a digital 3-D production for their new home.
The center's new website, www.civilwarphotography.org, is now accessible, and includes a wide range of information about the center and the Image of War seminar, as well as background information on Civil War photography and a display of vintage photographs as well as a direct link to Gibson's Gallery, with its vast display of Rob Gibson's modern wet-plate images. The website has been averaging 2,500 hits per month in recent months, and has spawned scores of inquiries and questions about Civil War photography. The revamped website now offers memberships in the center through a secure credit card purchase arrangements, as well as an online bookstore. We have used our $5,000 grant from the Earl Knudsen Charitable Foundation to redesign the website, as well as publish this newsletter and finance the other activities of the center.
The center has received its first major donations of collections, and center has been busy assembling an inventory of the hundreds of Civil War books and other items donated by the estate of Joe and Marilyn Blocker. Thomas Publications in Gettysburg has provided space to temporarily store this large collection, and has donated proceeds to the center from its Gettysburg book show in the fall of 2002.
Meanwhile, Center Vice President Garry Adelman has begun assessing and cataloguing the hundreds of 4x5 negatives of the Gettysburg battlefield from the 1920s to the 1960s that the center now owns; a collection donated by an anonymous donor. You'll find separate stories on both of these collections in this newsletter. And we aim to make our newsletter more than a way to provide information about the center and its activities. We aim to feature a new Civil War photographic discovery—a previously unpublished image—in every edition of this newsletter, starting with our front-page stereo photograph of the Wilderness battlefield in this issue. The center is also offering its first publication, the complete catalog of Gardner's Photographic Incidents of the War, which compiles for the first time all 2,200 stereographs and photographs that Gardner and his associates made during the war. A limited number of copies of the catalog are available through the purchase of a center membership.
We're also busy developing a business plan for the center that will allow us to compete for grants and other funding. The center was formally incorporated as a Pennsylvania corporation on Oct. 12, 2001 and we were notified on June 14, 2002 that we had been accepted by the Internal Revenue Service as a section 501 c 3 non-profit organization. Our new assistant, Jennifer Kon, an honor student at the University of South Florida who joined us in the fall of 2002, has been working with Secretary/Treasurer and Development Director Chuck Morrongiello to assemble the many, varied elements of the plan, as well as maintaining our membership roll and books in good order. In May 2003, she was voted in as the fifth member of the Center's board of directors.
The Center for Civil War Photography is proud and thankful to accept a collection of several hundred books, videos, lithograph paintings and other items from the collection of the late Joe and Marilyn Blocker, but we do so under somber circumstances.
These books, which include many standard Civil War texts, including an entire set of the Official Records, will form the cornerstone of the library that the Center plans to include as part of its permanent facility in Gettysburg. Until that happens, they are being safety kept there by Thomas Publications, a Center supporter.
No one was more passionate about Civil War studies than Joe Blocker, particularly anything related to the Confederacy. He was, after all, a native of Texas. I got to know him in the 1980s, when I was a reporter for the Long Beach Press-Telegram and Joe was a Long Beach Municipal Court judge. Joe decided to create the Long Beach Civil War Round Table, and I became one of its early members. Soon, I was preparing slide presentations. Because of Joe's initiative, I became a Civil War lecturer. Joe was also a founder of the annual West Coast Civil War Conference, which continues today under Jerry Russell's auspices.
Joe had a kindly face that matched his temperament. And he always seemed to wear a smile, despite the daily dose of life's detritus that passed before his judicious eyes. Marilyn was bright and bubbly. They were a perfect match and were devoted to each other. Joe's pride and joy was his collection of Civil War books. When I first saw it at his home in Seal Beach, Ca., in the 1980s, it was already massive and the hundreds of volumes covered the walls of two rooms. I lost track of Joe and Marilyn after we moved to North Carolina in 1990. More than a decade later, in the fall of 2001, I decided to see if I could track him down. I obtained an address for him in La Quinta, Ca., from Jerry Russell.
My letter arrived on the day of his funeral. Joe had passed away on Dec. 21, 2001, about two months after he and Marilyn were broadsided in their Nissan in a La Quinta intersection by a massive pickup truck driven by a drunk driver who ran a red light. Marilyn never regained consciousness after the devastating accident on Oct. 22, 2001. She died November 4.
Joe was seriously injured, with multiple fractures, but was slowly recovering and in good spirits when he died suddenly at a rehabilitation center of heart failure. The Blockers had no children, and it was left to Marilyn's sister, Stephanie Kovalchuk, and her husband, Alex, of Stillwater, Minn., to dispose of their estate. The Kovalchuks decided to donate much of Joe's collection to the Confederate Research Center at Hill College in Joe's hometown of Hillsboro, Texas. After Joe retired, he and Marilyn spent a couple of years of back there helping to care for his elderly mother. They became very actively involved the research center and its programs.
But Joe's collection was so large, there was enough to help two organizations. In late December 2002, the Center accepted delivery of a pallet containing more than 40 boxes of books. After we finish an inventory and an accounting of the donation, the center will place a bookplate remembering Joe and Marilyn in each volume.
~ Bob Zeller
One of the negatives donated includes this image of visitors at Little Round Top in the 1950s.
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| One of the negatives donated includes this image of visitors at Little Round Top in the 1950s. |
Some of the lost sights of the Gettysburg National Military Park that existed in the early to mid-20th century include the Cyclorama when it was Baltimore Street, the old tower on Big Round Top, Oak Hill without the Peace Light Memorial and the Stuckey's Restaurant that used to sit at the Peach Orchard. These are just a few of the sights that are preserved in a collection of nearly 1,000 negatives of the park given to the Center by an anonymous donor. This collection is the first acquired by the Center for Civil War Photography and will form the foundation of the NCCWP's archives. The images, which were recorded between the 1920s and the 1960s, consist mostly of improvement work at the Gettysburg National Military Park, visiting dignitaries, and general Park conditions. The negatives, mostly in 4x5 format, are duplicates from the Gettysburg National Military Park collection which were slated for the trash bin some thirty years ago. Rescued from such a fate by the donor, they sat in a Gettysburg-area garage for decades before being donated to the Center. The Adams County Historical Society has expressed an interest in forming a partnership with the Center to catalog and print the negatives thereby preserving the collection and making it more accessible to the public. The Center will be pleased to have the negatives as a part of the Historical Society's unparalleled collection of Gettysburgiana.
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