Your personal choice of "most tragic" character in the assassination story

[Linda Anderson]

Maddie -

The photo of young Powell as a 15 year old in Alias is a CDV which was made from an ambrotype.


CDV's (short for the French Carte de Visite) were very, very popular -

This is a good site which explains the process for these albumen photographs. http://www.photographymuseum.com/histsw.htm

Here is a CDV of Lewis Powell which was made by Gardner and sold in his studio -

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Thanks for uploading, Betty! - How weird that they made this CDV of Powell for selling!

Did Gardner take pictures of all the assassins and how good did they sell? Bestsellers? Does anyone know? Was it like collecting baseball or soccer cards? I read those CDVs were not that expensive. How popular was it to own them?

I don't think any of the assassins did know why they were photographed/daguerreotyped (?). I assume, especially Powell would have become even more angry and desperate if he had known that Gardner sold his picture.

It's interesting that Gardner chose this picture, Powells grim facial expression. It really transfers his image of being the cold blooded berserk.

This is from Witness to an Era: The Life and Photographs of Alexander Gardner by D. Mark Katz.

"Like almost everyone, Gardner was apparently fascinated with Lewis Paine [Powell]. Not only did Gardner take at least ten photographs of him on possibly two occasions, but he also took the trouble of copyrighting six of these ten on May 17, 1865. Of all the photographs of the conspirators and their execution, these were the only ones he copyrighted."

Here is a link to a 2012 article on Gardner's photos of Powell.

http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/extended/arc...r_gardner/