Will the Real Abraham Lincoln Please Stand Up?
A former Disney animator makes a provocative discovery by studying photos taken during the Gettysburg Address
- By Franz Lidz
- Smithsonian magazine, October 2013, Subscribe
In Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up, a fashion photographer enlarges a series of pictures he’s taken and discovers he may have inadvertently witnessed a murder. His reconstruction of the event becomes an abstract study of subjectivity and perception. Does the camera ever lie? The question has profound implications for Christopher Oakley, who on March 5, during the bleak hours into the dawn, stumbled upon what looks to be the most significant, if not the most provocative, Abraham Lincoln photo find of the last 60 years. The former Disney animator savors the magic moment of discovery as if it were a Proustian madeleine or a 1943 Lincoln copper penny.
See Oakley's finding in this interactive photograph
Oakley, who teaches new media at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, was in his home studio working on a three-dimensional animation of Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address. Through the Virtual Lincoln Project, a collaboration with undergraduate researchers, Oakley hopes to shed more light on what happened during the historic dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, an event muddled by conflicting accounts, poor documentation, outright myths and a handful of confusing photographs.
Virtual Lincoln is both a marvel of computer Imagineering and an exercise in laborious exactitude. Over the last two years Oakley’s students have spent hundreds of hours perfecting Lincoln’s features circa November 1863, using Maya, a professional-grade animation and special-effects software program, and life casts Oakley has collected. Maya has also allowed the team to reconstruct the dedication sites of Evergreen and Soldiers’ National cemeteries as they looked at the time of Lincoln’s speech. Using the Evergreen gatehouse, a flagpole, stand-in models for the president and other notables, and four photos of the ceremony, the researchers have mapped out the various photographers’ positions and reproduced their images digitally. Their project is slated for completion by November 19, the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s speech.
For verisimilitude, Oakley’s team mined the archives of the Library of Congress, which in 2002 began making its trove of more than 7,000 Civil War-era negatives available online in high-resolution scans. There are only about six-score-and-ten known photos of Lincoln, and the ones taken during his greatest rhetorical triumph are so rare that they’re viewed like holy relics. He’s been identified in only three shots, and two of those IDs—announced to great fanfare in 2007—have been challenged.
When Oakley made his breakthrough, he was studying an enlargement of one of the images in dispute, a wide crowd shot of the ceremony. To create it, the professional photographer Alexander Gardner had employed a new technique called the stereograph. Two lenses created photos simultaneously, which yielded a 3-D image when seen through a kind of early View-Master. The choicest stereograph views were mass-marketed to the public.
Oakley wanted his animated 3-D re-creation of Gettysburg to feature a Sgt. Pepper-esque collage of the dignitaries who were seated with Lincoln on the platform. While trying to distinguish them in the right half of Gardner’s first stereo plate, he zoomed in and spotted, in a gray blur, the distinctive hawk-like profile of William H. Steward, Lincoln’s secretary of state. Oakley superimposed a well-known portrait of Seward over the face and toggled it up and down for comparison. “Everything lined up beautifully,” he recalls. “I knew from the one irrefutable photo of Lincoln at Gettysburg that Seward sat near him on the platform.” He figured the president must be in the vicinity.
Oakley downloaded the right side of a follow-up shot Gardner snapped from the same elevated spot, but the image was partly obscured by varnish flaking off the back of the 4- by 10-inch glass-plate negative. “Still, Seward hadn’t budged,” he says. “Though his head was turned slightly away from camera, he was in perfect profile.” To Seward’s left was the vague outline of a bearded figure in a stovepipe hat. Oakley leaned into the flat-screen monitor and murmured, “No way!” Zooming in tight, real tight, he stared, compared and sprang abruptly from his chair. After quickstepping around his studio in disbelief, he exulted, “That’s him!”
SEE AN INTERACTIVE DISPLAY OF OAKLEY'S FINDINGS
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Oakley pulls together information the way a field marshal gathers an army. What separates him from other Abe-olitionists is his animator’s eye—he’s been trained to track and recreate movement and understand how it works.
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Comments (12)
Not to diminish the talent and skills used for this finding but, sadly, not a breakthrough. The photo is publicly viewable and hanging in a room where I gave a speech last week; with background on the photographer's rushed positioning for the impromptu shot of Lincoln. It's been there for decades.
Posted by don schmincke on September 25,2013 | 08:44 PM
"Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg" (2012) @Amazon.com IMHO lays out a better candidate for Lincoln. Some arguments v. Oakley's Lincoln: (1) When Lincoln approached the stand he was "the observed of all observers;" Oakley's Lincoln is completely unobserved; (2) None of the men near Oakley's Lincoln (on the ground or on the platform) removed their hats; journalists described men doffing their hats when Lincoln approached; (3) IMHO Oakley's Lincoln is seated in #1 in the exact spot where Oakley pegs him in #2, sporting the same hat tilted in a similar orientation as in #2; (4) Oakley's purported Seward's face is almost completely obscured in #2 - the one in which it is said that he is unmistakably Seward. Unlike Seward, seen in Bachrach's photo elsewhere on the platform, Oakley's Seward is not wearing the correct topcoat; (5) Oakley's Seward is seated in the wrong spot at the tail end of the platform near purported stairs and behind the front row. Bachrach's photo shows Seward seated centered in the front row of dignitaries next to Lincoln; (6) In the left stereo of photo #2 there is a dark blob at the base of Prof. Oakley's Lincoln's chin. It is so much darker than any other facial hair seen on this individual, suggesting the presence of a dark bow tie near, rather than a Lincoln-like beard on, his chin. Also, the nose outlined over Prof. Oakley's Lincoln in the graphic overlays doesn't follow the actual contours of Prof. Oakley's Lincoln's "hawk-shaped" nose.
Posted by Craig Heberton on September 25,2013 | 05:07 PM
There is a link that identifies some of the people around Lincoln by by name and detailed photo. I can't seem to find it. can anyone help
Posted by Dan Landrum on September 25,2013 | 04:56 PM
Hello Civil War Buffs, Here is what I just posted on the "Lincoln photo". Commenter 4 minutes ago 0 0 Funny thing is that, and this has been proven...Lincoln wasn't even in the National Cemetery as it stands today. The split off a "tail" of the then Citizens Cemetery (Evergreen now) as it was the locals who were buried there. They didn't want that connected with Lincoln. I know this first hand because my 90 year old friend is the great granddaughter of Elizabeth Thorn, the one women chosen from all Civil War women, to represent then. She buried around 90-100 dead soldiers , with a pick and shovel, with her father, in the rock and clay right at the Gatehouse where she lived. There are markers along the road in that cemetery. The Gate house still stands, but a house is attached to it. My Ruth was able to sleep in Elizabeth's bedroom when we visited Gettysburg in June, this year. Look up "Elizabeth Thorn" and Evergreen Cemetery, you will get the entire short story in Elizabeth's words. The 7 ft bronze statue, already positioned, will soon bear her name. Ruth worked with the gatehouse keeper, Brian, to confirm the words for the plaque to be placed within the next few months. (addition): I will be happy to contact you about Ruth, she is perky at 90 years. Mind is fine, she is still driving. IF you look up "Elizabeth Thorn & Ruth Angeli", you will find the articles written about this subject, and with more digging you will find Elizabeth's typed original from her handwriting. I think it would be also nice for your magazine. Thanks, Kathy PS: we live in St. Petersburg, FL, phone numbers for me as Ruth runs everything thru me: 727 498 7962 H 770 778 2919 C She will gladly volunteer her story for your magazine.
Posted by KATHY PATTERSON on September 25,2013 | 09:50 AM
The article contains a serious typo. It states that Lincoln's Secretary of State was William H. Steward, when the name is supposed to read William H. Seward. An extra t was added to Seward's name.
Posted by Nathan Grant on September 25,2013 | 09:22 AM
About the Gardner photo: Lincoln was among the first to step up to the platform upon arrival, and then the area in front of the stand that soldiers had kept vacant was filled in by the rest of the parade. The dense crowd shown before the stand makes it unlikely that Lincoln is still on the ground. Nor was the Gardner photo taken as Lincoln departed, because nobody shows any signs of getting ready to form the procession back to town. This photo was likely taken at some point during the ceremony when Lincoln was on the stand. The front of the stand seems to have run nearly parallel to the axis of this vantage point and the gatehouse arch; the Bachrach photo was taken nearly perpendicular to this axis, facing the front of the stand. From the vantage point of the Gardner photo, Lincoln is probably not visible. The alleged new image is likely a quite convincing mirage. (I have just published a book on the speech).
Posted by Martin P. Johnson on September 24,2013 | 12:17 AM
Isn't this old news. I think this was discovered a couple of years ago.
Posted by john on September 24,2013 | 08:21 PM
Congrats to Professor Oakley! He deserves every bit of this!
Posted by Casey W. on September 24,2013 | 07:00 PM
How are we supposed to know this is even him, and if so, why does it matter?
Posted by Joe Smoe on September 24,2013 | 06:07 PM
Great article, and interesting story between these gentlemen. Could you please also post the photographs in question (i.e. Oakley's discovery and Richter's "horse riding Abe")?
Posted by TR Altizer on September 24,2013 | 12:34 PM
Was this article edited by anyone? The correct spelling of Lincoln's secretary of state was Seward, not Steward (paragraph 6). And does the writing need to be so painfully unctuous? Madonna. Antonioni. "Proustian madeleines." Please wash and rinse this copy. I expected more from the staff at Smithsonian.
Posted by Pablo on September 24,2013 | 11:49 AM
Absolutely brilliant piece. Love the writing. Hail to the chief!
Posted by Carl F. on September 24,2013 | 09:12 AM