Alexander Gardner (October 17, 1821 - December 10, 1882) was a Scottish photographer best known for his photographs of the American Civil War. Born in Scotland, Gardner originally apprenticed with a jeweler. Gardner spent his youth in Scotland helping to create a cooperative community in Monona, Iowa, choosing to stay in Scotland and support the community financially. In 1851 he became the owner and operator of the Glasgow Sentinel. That same year Gardner visited the Great Exhibition in London where he first encountered Mathew Brady’s photography, which sparked his interest in the field. Gardner and his family moved to the United States in 1856 and settled in New York after they discovered that tuberculosis had ravaged the community in Iowa. Since he was living in New York, Gardner contacted Brady and became his assistant that year. Gardner became more and more involved in Brady’s business and became the manager of Brady’s Washington, D.C. gallery in 1858. After Lincoln’s election in 1860, the threat of war began. Gardner found himself in demand as a portraitist in D.C., capturing images of soldiers before they left for combat. Not long after, Gardner left for the front as well, photographing General McClellan’s Army of the Potomac and the Battle of Antietam. Gardner left the Brady firm in late 1862 and opened his own gallery. While the reasons for Gardner leaving Brady’s employ are not known for certain, it is likely that Brady’s unwillingness to give credit to individual photographers and his insistence on attributing all photographs taken for the gallery as “photographed by Brady” was one of the major factors. Many of Brady’s other photographers followed Gardner to his new gallery, where they were given at least partial credit for their work. Gardner continued to create photographs throughout the rest of the war, including the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the Siege of Petersburg. After the war, in 1866, Gardner published Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War, a two-volume work that included 100 hand-mounted photographs. Gardner continued in photography until 1871, when he gave up the trade and helped found an insurance company.



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