Some Civil War After the Battle Photos Were Staged, Jylha Tells CWRT
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Sailor Bob Boquette, right, shows Eric Jylha examples of ambrotype photos taken during the Civil War era.
This image clearly shows Lincoln on horseback, saluting soldiers with a white-gloved hand.
Many photographs taken by famed Civil War photographer Matthew Brady were staged, said Eric Jylha, local historian, in a talk to the 7th Michigan Cavalry Civil War Round Table recently at the Stein Haus.
The group had a record turnout of about 50 persons at the meeting, including several professional photographers.
One particular shot, of five Union dead at Gettysburg, was passed off as taken at several battlefields, said Mr. Jylha.
Actual photos of battles was impossible because of the limitations of the wet plate photography of the time, the fact that smoke obscured battlefields and the difficulty of capturing action. the photos would show only blurs if there was any movement; that's why only static scenes of soldiers or guns were possible.
The photo, captioned "dead of the first day" couldn't have been real because Brady didn't get to Gettysburg until the fifth day, said Sailor Bob Boquette, of Saginaw, CWRT member who has studied photography of the era.
Another commonly faked photo was entitled "rebel sharpshooter," an image that was passed off as having been at "Devil's Den" and several other places, said Mr. Jylha.
One of the more interesting aspects of the Civil War era of photography was the seven key images shot by Alexander Gardner, an associate of Brady, at the Academy Penitentiary. The shots depicted various stages of the hanging of Lincoln assassination conspirators.
The photos were originally transferred to drawings before publication, Mr. Jylha said, commenting: "It was the first photo story.
About 1,000 of Gardner's images are posted on the website of the Center for Civil War Photography, http://www.civilwarphotography.org.
The recent sensational find of Lincoln images in photos taken at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg were shown by Mr. Jylha. This find has electrified the Civil War historiography scene, he noted. The CCWP comments on the find:
"In the first view, Lincoln is seen in profile between two lines of troops. 'When the military units reached the dedication site, they formed lines so the president would have a lane to the platform steps,' author Frank L. Klement writes in The Gettysburg Soldiers? Cemetery and Lincoln's Address. (1993, White Mane Publishing)."
"In the second view, Lincoln appears to be saluting the troops with his white-gloved left hand as he continues down the lane. Klement writes that Lincoln had a pair of white riding gloves for the procession, and that the soldiers formed the corridor to salute the president as well as to keep the crowd back."
After making the stereo photographs, Gardner never bothered to make prints because the results seemed so disappointing. Lincoln was not visible without enlarging the scene, which was not feasible in the photographic technology of the Civil War.
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