Alexander Gardner

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(b Paisley, Scotland, 17 Oct 1821; d Washington, DC, 11 Dec 1882). American photographer of Scottish birth. He was apprenticed to a jeweller (c. 1835-43) until his interest in optics, astronomy, chemistry, literature and social welfare led him to move to Glasgow. There he took a position as a reporter for the news journal Sentinel, of which he eventually became editor. He is believed to have been a self-taught photographer. Gardner had plans to found a Utopian socialist community in the USA, but when he emigrated in 1856 it was with a fare paid for by the photographer Mathew B. Brady. They had met in England in 1851 at the Great Exhibition. Brady appointed him manager of another branch of his gallery in Washington, DC, in 1858, after first giving him a position in his studio in New York.

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Gardner, Alexander (1821-82), Scottish- born American photographer. He taught himself photography c.1843 and reported for the Glasgow Sentinel before moving to Washington in 1858 to operate a gallery for Mathew Brady. Gardner was one of several photographers who worked for Brady in the American Civil War and, with Timothy O'Sullivan, he resigned in 1863 in protest against Brady's failure to credit others, eventually opening his own studio. He made many of his surviving post-1863 views while serving as official photographer for the army of the Potomac. Especially notable is his two-volume Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War (1866), incorporating images with lengthy captions which memorialized and made iconic key sites of Union victory and loss. After the war Gardner photographed the trial and execution of the Lincoln conspirators; in 1867 he became official photographer for the Union Pacific Railroad, and created a significant body of stereographic images of Great Plains Native American tribes and striking western landscapes.

— Constance B. Schulz

Alexander Gardner may refer to:

• Alexander Gardner (photographer) (1821–1882)
• Alexander Gardner (soldier) (1785–1877)
• Alex Gardner, Canadian baseball player

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