George N. Barnard and Alexander Gardner on Antiques Roadshow

Antiques Roadshow (from Cleveland) had a seqment from Western Reserve Archives on Barnard and Gardner. It seems that Barnard "doctored" his Civil War scenes from color-blind negatives with lots of clouds (they didn't say how he did it, but it looked pretty good - Ansel would have been proud), and Gardner took pictures from different angles of scenes of dead soldiers labeling one view "Confederates" and another view "Union." He even moved the famous "Dead Confederate Sharpshooter" to different locations, and posed him with different firearms. And it wasn't even digital - Hee hee!

See the book "Gettysburg: A Journey In Time" by William A. Frassanito; I believe he was the first to notice that the "sniper's" body was moved.

In that book, and in his book on Antietam, Frassanito tries to identify (and photograph) the locations of the old Civil War photographs. An interesting exercise.

(I was a Civil War buff long before the photography bug bit me; when I encountered Timothy H. O'Sullivan's photos from the SouthWest - particularly the famous one from Canyon de Chelly - it was like running into an old friend.)

--Bill Hahn

Adding clouds was common back then because the plate emulsions were only sensitve to blue light. The sky details were blown out.