apprenticed to a jeweler (1835-43); self-taught
c.1843 – reporter for the Glasgow (Scotland) Sentinel
1851 – meets photographer Mathew Brady at Great (Crystal Palace) Exhibition (London)
1858 – hired as manager of Brady’s Washington, DC gallery
1861 – hired to lead photographic team documenting the Union Army
1862 – leaves Brady’s gallery; appointed Official Photographer for the (Union) Army of the Potomac
1866 – Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War published
1867 – hired as official photographer for the Union Pacific Railroad
1870s – operates portrait studio in Washington, DC
New York (1856); Washington, DC (1858-82); Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri (1867)
Union Pacific Railroad; US government
A Harvest of Death, 1863 ( J. Paul Getty Museum , Los Angeles)
Lee, Anthony W. and Elizabeth Young. On Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008
Trachtenberg, Alan. “Albums of War, On Reading Civil War Photographs,” in Critical Issues in American Art, Mary Ann Calo, ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997, pp. 135-54