Field where General Reynolds Fell, Gettysburg
Photograph
Alexander Gardner
American, b. Scotland, 1821–1882
Field where General Reynolds Fell, Gettysburg
Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War. Vol. I, 1866.
July 1863
Albumen silver print, printed ca. 1866
Image: 7 × 9 1/16 in. (17.8 × 23 cm)
Mount: 12 5/8 × 16 7/8 in. (32 × 42.9 cm)
Gift of Eastman Kodak Company, 1948
1981.0004.0037
Inscriptions Printed on mount recto, BL: Negative by T. H. O'Sullivan.
Printed on mount recto, BC: Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1866, by A. Gardner, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Columbia.
Printed on mount recto, BR: Positive by A. Gardner, 511 7th st., Washington.
Printed on mount recto, BC: Field where General Reynolds Fell, Gettysburg.
Printed on mount recto, BL: No. 37.
Printed on mount recto, BR: July, 1863.
Printed on mount recto, BC: Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1866, by A. Gardner, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Columbia.
Printed on mount recto, BR: Positive by A. Gardner, 511 7th st., Washington.
Printed on mount recto, BC: Field where General Reynolds Fell, Gettysburg.
Printed on mount recto, BL: No. 37.
Printed on mount recto, BR: July, 1863.
TextFew photographers chronicled the American experience during the third quarter of the nineteenth century as thoroughly and masterfully as Timothy O’Sullivan. Due to the nature of photographic materials and processes at the time, photographers suggested the experience of war not through images of the action (which moved too quickly to record) but by documenting the artillery, personnel, and sites involved. O’Sullivan’s photograph of the Battle of Gettysburg’s remnants, with its allusion to a fallen hero and grisly sea of bloated corpses, is as haunting—if not as shocking—today as it was in the 1860s. Both of these photographs originally appeared in Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War, an album of photographs published in 1866 and edited by photographer Alexander Gardner, O’Sullivan’s employer during the final years of the war.
Lisa Hostetler, Ph.D.
Curator in Charge, Department of Photography
Label for A History of Photography [Rotation 1]
May 9–September 28, 2014
Lisa Hostetler, Ph.D.
Curator in Charge, Department of Photography
Label for A History of Photography [Rotation 1]
May 9–September 28, 2014
