Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
What Do I Want, John Henry?
Alexander Gardner (American, born Scotland, 1821–1882)
November 1862
- Medium
- Albumen print, pl. 27 from the album "Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War, vol. 1" (1866)
- Classification
- Photograph
- Dimensions
- 17.7 × 22.9 cm (7 × 9 1/16 in.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Photography and Media
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. Everett Kovler
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
At the start of the Civil War, Alexander Gardner was granted unlimited access to photograph the Union troops. The images Gardner produced over the next four years—documenting the aftermath of battles and the life of soldiers in camp—were seen primarily in exhibitions and circulated in smaller form as cartes de visite. He published Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War in 1865, at the war’s end. With two volumes of 50 albumen prints each, the album retailed for $150—the equivalent of several months of an average worker’s wages—making it a luxury item. According to the photographer, “What do I want, John Henry?” was a question this Union captain frequently asked his servant (ex-slaves most often served the Northern army as cooks and laborers). On the page accompanying this photograph, Gardner patronizingly described John Henry as an “affectionate creature” of “untutored nature,” who was grateful for his newfound freedom at the war’s end.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
