Abraham Lincoln, February 5, 1865

1. Abraham Lincoln, February 5, 1865 ALEXANDER GARDNER [1821–1882]

2. http://www.biography.com/articles/Abraham-Lincoln-9382540

3. Abraham Lincoln was the first American president to use photography for political purposes.

4. During his first presidential campaign in 1860, some thirty-five portraits of the candidate by the photographer Mathew Brady were circulated throughout the country.

5. 1860

11. It is only after Lincoln became President of the United States of America that he grew a beard.

18. January 8, 1864

21. The immediacy of a photograph created a sense of intimacy between viewer and subject (or voter and candidate) that few painted portraits could achieve particularly in the mid-nineteenth century, when the medium was still a novelty for many Americans.

22. Today • What “new” technology has made getting to know people, ideas and agendas popular today?

23. This is the same concept that the photograph did for Lincoln in his day.

24. Acknowledging its power to move the populace, Lincoln gave portrait photography credit for his victory. “Make no mistake,” he said. “Brady made me President!”

26. This photograph of Lincoln by Alexander Gardner was made some years later, when the burden of the presidency had taken its toll.

27. Gardner had been one in a team of photographers employed by Brady to follow the Union troops and make a visual record of the Civil War.

28. President Abraham Lincoln at the Battle of AntietamAllan Pinkerton, President Lincoln, and Major General John A. McClernand Sept./Oct. 1862

29. Photograph of President Abraham Lincoln and His Generals After Antietam, 1862

31. Abraham Lincoln (C,R of man wearing tall stove pipe hat) surrounded by crowd, preparing to deliver Gettysburg address at dedication of Gettysburg Natl. Cemetery.

33. Alexander Gardner began to work independently in 1863, when he established his own studio in Washington, D.C., and became known for his portraits of uniformed soldiers setting off for war.

34. President Lincoln visited Gardner’s studio one Sunday in February 1865, the final year of the Civil War, accompanied by the American portraitist Matthew Wilson.

35. Wilson had been commissioned to paint the president’s portrait, but because Lincoln could spare so little time to pose, the artist needed recent photographs to work from.

36. Matthew Henry Wilson’s Portrait

37. The pictures served their purpose, but the resulting painting—a traditional, formal, bust-length portrait in an oval format—is not particularly distinguished and hardly remembered today.

38. Gardner’s surprisingly candid photographs have proven more enduring, even though they were not originally intended to stand alone as works of art.

39. “On a cold bleak Sunday morning on February 5th, 1865 Abraham Lincoln, accompanied by his young son Tad, paid a short visit to the Washington DC photography studio of Alexander Gardner. The Gardner photograph session on February 5th took slightly over an hour from the president’s demanding schedule and consisted of five poses. 

40. The first showed a serious looking Tad leaning on a table, beside his amused seated father. All the other poses showed Lincoln sitting in a comfortable Queen Anne style padded chair with minor variations. Of the seated poses, the first had Lincoln with his hands on his legs,

42. the second with his hands grasping the chair arms, and the third with his hands together in his lap holding a pencil and his reading glasses. The third pose, known today to Lincoln scholars as O-116, is the most revered of all Lincoln photos… ”  

45. This half-length portrait of Lincoln is one of the finest from that February studio session.

46. The president sits comfortably in a sturdy chair, his left elbow resting on its arm, his right on his own slightly elevated knee.

47. Check out the Symbolism • There is nothing in this photograph to indicate Lincoln’s exalted position: We might just as well be looking at a humble country doctor.

48. His clothing appears plain (though not unfashionable) and his loosely knotted bowtie has been left slightly askew.

49. By this point in his public life, the President Lincoln had sat for dozens of photographs, and he would have been mindful of the need to hold perfectly still during the several minutes it took to make an exposure.

50. In this print, Lincoln’s eyes look steadily toward the camera but his hands fiddle impatiently with his eyeglasses and pencil as if to remind the photographer that he had more important things to do.