GARDNER'S PHOTOGRAPHIC SKETCH BOOK OF THE WAR. Vol. II by Gardner, Alexander - [ 1865].

Washington: Philp & Solomons, [ 1865].. [53]pp. of text. Mounted on guards throughout, tinted lithographic titlepage with lettering within integral pictorial borders. Fifty original albumen silver print photographs (each approximately 7 x 9 inches), each mounted on card within a lithographed frame with letterpress caption, each image accompanied by a page of letterpress description. Oblong folio. Original publisher's black morocco, gilt, spines gilt, a.e.g. Corners slightly worn. Light dampstaining. About very good. In a half morocco clamshell case. The second volume of this work, the most famous collection of Civil War photographs, which was published in an edition of no more than 200 sets. It includes many of the most celebrated and recognizable images of the war. The photographs in this volume are organized chronologically, beginning after Gettysburg and Vicksburg in September 1863 and ending with the dedication of the monument at Bull Run to commemorate the Union soldiers who had died there. Unlike Matthew Brady, who was in the habit of placing his name on images made by his field operators, Gardner specifically credits each image to the particular photographer responsible, shedding light on the work of some of the most distinguished American photographers of the day. In addition to Gardner, the SKETCH BOOK... includes work by Timothy O'Sullivan, William Pywell, D.B. Woodbury, David Knox, Barnard & Gibson, J. Reekie, and others.

These images form perhaps the most important pictorial record of the Civil War. According to Taft, this work "is one of the most important sources of information that we have on the subject, as from it we learn the names of many men who actually made the photographs of the Civil War, and were employed by Brady and Gardner." "The photographs show the terrain of the battles..., encampments, headquarters of the troops, officers and enlisted men, soldiers in drill formation and in the field under fire, and the ruins left after the battles. Limitations in the process of photography did not permit work during the battles; the photographs are remarkable documents of the circumstantial evidence for war. Recent investigations suggest that not every site was recorded just as found by the photographer but that a certain amount of rearranging, including actually moving the corpses, was undertaken in some situations. The captions, conceived in poetic rather than terse journalistic terms, suggest that the authors saw their work as having the human significance we see in many of the photographs of today" - Goldschmidt & Naef.

Gardner's work was published by the Washington, D.C. firm of Philp & Solomons, and carried the rather hefty price of $150. The one hundred photographs that were included were selected from a collection of over 3,000 negatives, and the lithographic titlepages were designed by Alfred R. Waud (though designated A.R. Ward on the titlepages), one of the most important illustrators of the day. The publishers issued two slightly separate versions of the book, one in 1865 and the other in 1866. This volume is from the 1865 issue, with the caption "Incidents of the War" on each mount. HOWES G64. SABIN 26635. GOLDSCHMIDT & NAEF, TRUTHFUL LENS 68. NEVINS II, p.14. Julie L. Mellby, "Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War" in PRINCETON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CHRONICLE (Winter 2006), pp.435-40.