Abraham Lincoln's inauguration in 1861 was not the first presidential inauguration to be photographed, but due to Lincoln's relative importance in US history, that photo has become an icon. Yet it is so blurry that you cannot see Lincoln standing to give his address. The lllustrated Times Weekly chose to publish a woodcut made from the image instead of the photograph in order to make the details clear. And until recently, the photo was uncredited or mis-credited.
Alexander Gardner, then employed at Mathew Brady’s Washington gallery, is most often credited as the man behind the lens, though he never actually said that he was. Over time, it became attributed to him, which seemed reasonable. He took Lincoln’s portrait many times, he recorded some of the most lasting images of the Civil War and he photographed Lincoln’s second inauguration.
However, my recent research in the Library’s collections has shown that he did not take the historic image of the first inauguration. That photographer, instead, was the unheralded John Wood.
If you’ve never heard the name, don’t worry. He’s virtually unknown in American photography. If five of his images did not appear in “Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War,” he might not be mentioned at all.
But Wood was the government’s first official photographer.
Adrienne M. Lundgren is a senior photograph conservator at the Library of Congress. She did not deduce that Wood took the picture of Lincoln's inauguration just from his job title. That was a painstaking investigation that she explains in a post at the Library of Congress Blog. -via Damn Interesting