Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 - (Page 67)

opposite page, top: Prisoners at the Baton Rouge penitentiary manufactured a wide range of clothing and other materials for use by the inmates and occasionally other public institutions. Though not entirely self-sustaining, these manufacturing facilities created thousands of coats, pants, shirts, pillow slips and cases, bed ticks, towels, suspenders, and shoes. Photo ca. 1910. opposite page, bottom: In 1880, Major James purchased a large tract of land north of Baton Rouge along the Mississippi River. Naming it “Angola,” he housed some inmates in the old slave quarters on the property. Most of the convicts were used for levee construction. This photo shows an interior view of the Angola State Farm hospital, ca. 1900. above: Prisoners constructing a levee near the Angola State Farm, ca. 1900. Daily Advocate and the [Port Allen, La.] Sugar Planter. In April 1862, Union naval forces under Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, commander of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, passed the Confederate forts on the Lower Mississippi, moved on to New Orleans, and captured the city. Within a month, Baton Rouge fell to Union forces. It seems that Andrew initially photographed the occupying forces and their naval transports from the relative security of his studio. With time, however, Lytle moved his camera to the riverfront — and occasionally onto the river — to better capture images of Farragut’s fleet. He also went up into other buildings in town to create bird’seye views of Federal army encampments and set up his photographer’s tent in the camps to visually document Union officers at leisure. In town, his portrait studio produced images of individual Union soldiers and sailors throughout the war and Reconstruction. According to Lytle family lore, Andrew and Mary visited the officers of the occupation forces not only to take their pictures but for social reasons. Their socializing with the Union forces disturbed their fellow Baton Rouge citizens Summer 2008/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 67 and raised the question of where the Lytles’ loyalties lay. Local citizens were concerned enough with Lytles apparent pro-Union sympathies to send a leading member of St. James Episcopal Church to the Lytle home to express the community’s concerns. During this visit, Andrew allegedly broke down and confessed to being an informal member of the Confederate Signal Service, saying he was gathering information from the Union officers to pass on to the defenders of Port Hudson. This statement seems at odds with the story that General Thomas Williams, the occupying force’s commanding officer, at one point posted a guard around the Lytle home to offer protection, not from Union forces but from community members. Additionally, General Williams, in 1865 or 1866, presented an engraved shotgun to Andrew as a token of his appreciation — appreciation for what we do not know. ••••• Known Lytle photographs from 1870 through 1885 suggest that Andrew worked in the studio, only occasionally taking his camera outside as he had during the Union occupation of 1862-65. His work shows a man capable of good, standard studio portraiture, but one who seldom varied from his established routines. Though he would change backdrops and props occasionally, Andrew maintained a limited repertoire of poses and themes. He did, however, abandon the ambrotype and, for the most part, the carte de visite format to adopt the “new” cabinet studio card format sometime in the 1870s. Life for the Lytles maintained a steady course through the 1870s and early 1880s. By 1888, when George Eastman THE HILL COLLECTION, HOLDINGS OF THE LSU LIBRARIES

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities George Rodrigue’s Louisiana: Cajuns, Blue Dogs & Beyond Katrina The Historic New Orleans Collection After The Flood Faubourg Marigny: The Creole “Suburb” Preserving New Orleans Jazz, One Generation at a Time: Conversation & Music with Tom Sancton Louisiana Foodways Louisiana Architecture Baton Rouge Photographs, 1863-1910 Jazz Notes The Ogden Museum of Southern Art Louisiana Association of Museums Nature of the “Beast” Louisiana State Museum Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.