Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War, Volume I 1861 - 1865

This is an albumen print made during the American Civil War by Alexander Gardner, part of his “Photographic Sketch Book.” The albumen process, requiring the coating of paper with egg white and silver nitrate, gave a remarkable tonal range. Gardner’s photographs were not only images, but commodities produced within a capitalist system. This print involved a division of labor: from those who manufactured the chemicals and equipment, to the darkroom assistants who prepared the plates, to Gardner himself who framed the shot. Consider the social dynamics visible here, the officers posing in a moment of leisure, attended by an enlisted man. It is easy to forget that photographs, like any other artifact, are made things. They come to us imbued with the labor, politics, and economics of their production. Recognizing this, we can appreciate Gardner’s images not only as historical documents, but as objects bearing the traces of their making.