Fortifications at Manassas

Alexander Gardner

March 1862

An albumen silver print by Alexander Gardner that records Union fortifications at Manassas, attempting to document the material realities—men, supplies, and earthworks—of the Civil War.

Your eye moves from a rough wooden causeway in the foreground past stacked barrels and groups of silhouetted men to low earthen ramparts on the horizon beneath a pale, flattened sky, giving the scene a quiet, methodical feeling of military labor and order.

As part of Gardner’s Civil War imagery, this photograph helped establish documentary photography’s power to reveal the logistics and human work behind modern warfare and to shape public understanding of conflict.

Palette

Art Terms

Albumen silver print Photography Documentary photography Photojournalism Landscape Built environment

Exhibitions

Photographs of the Civil War and the American Frontier

1942

Road to Victory

1942

French Photographs: Daguerre to Atget

1945

American Battle Painting 1776–1918

1944