'Shooting Lincoln': How photographers raced to document a president's death

The invention of the daguerreotype by Louis Daguerre in the 1830s revolutionized and democratized how people remembered their loved ones — and became acquainted with the faces of public figures.

During the Civil War, photography transformed how combat was covered, changing journalism.

Two early photographers with very different styles — and the way they covered the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln — are the focus of "Shooting Lincoln: Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and the Race to Photograph the Story of the Century" by Nicholas J.C. Pistor.

+5 

"Shooting Lincoln: Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and the Race to Photograph the Story of the Century"

By Nicholas J.C. Pistor

Published by Da Capo Press, 272 pages, $28

Pistor, a former investigative reporter for the Post-Dispatch and the author of "The Ax Murders of Saxtown," talked about his new book; he will be at Left Bank Books on Wednesday.

Brady was a showman whose New York studio was next to P.T. Barnum's establishment, Pistor points out. An expert marketer of his own brand, he became a household name who often appeared in his photographs, off to the side. Attracted to celebrities, both as subjects and companions, Brady contributed to the celebrity-driven journalism that we still see today.

+5 

Nicholas J.C. Pistor

Gardner, a Scot who met Brady at London's Great Exhibition of 1851, came to America first as Brady's assistant and then became his rival. Brady, who had terrible eyesight, spent lavishly on his studio and died bankrupt. Gardner — who went out into the field and whose war photos are often uncredited — was both a better businessman and more interested in the scientific aspects of his field.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q • How did you come up with the subject matter?

A • I had been looking at a lot of old pictures when I was doing my first book. One of the things I was struck by was that a lot of people back then didn't have photos because they were poor. I had been reading an article in a British newspaper about an auction of a photo of the famous hanging of the (Lincoln assassination) conspirators. It sold for quite a bit of money, and I thought it was interesting .

I started doing research into Alexander Gardner, who had taken the photo, and I started to look at how that one single moment really invented our modern media we have today.

Q • How did you go about researching it?

A • Most of the research was finding a lot of pictures through the Library of Congress. Both photographers took volumes of photos of the war and way before that. So a lot of it was looking at the pictures and where they were, and then tracing back and trying to piece together the events that they were involved in — these two people who were witness to the most consequential events of the 19th century — whether it was Civil War battlefields, the aftermath of Lincoln's assassination, or the great men they were photographing.

In addition, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield was a huge help. It has one of the most comprehensive library archives of that time period, and it's an hour and a half from St. Louis.

Q • How long did it take you?

A • From writing the outline, doing the research and writing, it was a little more than two years. I learned from my first book: At some point, you have to stop doing research and start writing. Once you have a good outline going, it makes it so much easier to start doing that — and when you're writing, you figure out what you don't know, and you go back and research it.

Q • Did you learn things that surprised you?

A • Oh my goodness, yes. The first battle of the Civil War, Brady went out to the battlefield; they all thought it would be like a sporting event. Then the real earnestness of war settled in. It was a traumatizing effect.

What really stood out to me was that these two men were really the beginners of so much of what we have today, the citizen journalist. (Recently) in St. Louis, and in Ferguson, you've had so many people who were not trained journalists going out and taking pictures. That was really a defining moment for Ferguson and today in St. Louis.

Gardner and Brady were the same way. They didn't work for giant organizations; they were self-employed businesspeople who went out there and risked a lot of money. If you think about how photography was then, you'd take glass plates on a wagon out through a battlefield. It was extremely expensive, and they risked so much in doing it, including their own lives.

Q • Where did that lead?

A • The culmination of that was Gardner's shots of the hanging of the (four convicted Lincoln assassination) conspirators. Really, in my opinion, that is the beginning of motion pictures. It's the first time you can actually go and look and witness an event as it happened.

When they took all the photos of the Civil War, it was after the battles had occurred, the aftermath, because the exposure time did not allow them to shoot. Photography had advanced by the time Lincoln was assassinated; Gardner had the ability — because they knew at what time the conspirators were to die — to do a multicamera shoot of their dropping to their deaths. In that series of photos, if you run through them, you almost see the bodies drop. It's from the beginning of that sequence shot that we later got motion pictures.

Q • Was photography a factor otherwise in capturing the conspirators?

A • The conspirators were the most wanted people in the country after the president was shot. One of the things that surprised me was how important photography had become to the legal process. Photographs are referred to constantly throughout the trial of the three men and one woman who were convicted of conspiring to help kill President Lincoln. Evidence used to convict Mary Surratt included pictures of Confederates she had purchased at one of Brady's studios, which were used to show her house was sympathetic to the Confederate cause.

The conspirators were all identified through pictures taken of them before the assassination, which went up on posters all over the country. It's the beginning of the wanted posters that became iconic through the American West.

Q • The Battle of Antietam was a significant moment.

A • Antietam was the first time Americans witnessed war up close. Gardner had gone to the battlefield and had taken amazing photos of the piles of bodies. Brady smartly displayed such photos in his galleries; these photo galleries were almost like cinemas, where people would go and look at pictures of the famous men and women of the day. When those photos went up, the New York Times wrote about it, and droves of people went to his gallery, for the first time seeing what the real carnage looked like. The war was not as romanced as it was in the past.

That was the beginning of documentary journalism, the first time people could actually see, as the New York Times so presciently noted, these were not just names on a list of the dead; you could see their faces. It had a compelling impact on people. Q • What happened in the race to get a photo of Lincoln in his coffin?

A • After Lincoln died, (photographers) all wanted a picture of him in his open casket. Neither Brady nor Gardner could do that; a rival, Jeremiah Gurney, did do that in New York. Brady was so well-connected to the government machinery that he was able to destroy the photo or get it confiscated. There were no prints of it made. Years later, the only copy of that photo was found; it's on display at the Lincoln library in Springfield.

Source: 'Shooting Lincoln': How photographers raced to document a president's death