Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 - (Page 71)

introduced a camera preloaded with film, Andrew had competition not only from other professional studios in town but also from anyone who could afford the price of dryplate equipment or Eastman’s preloaded point-andshoot camera. This increase in competition may have affected the Lytles’ business practices. As mentioned above, Andrew Lytle only rarely left his studio to take photographs for without Andrew, took the camera farther afield, and their travels resulted in a number of visually interesting landscapes that are very different from earlier Lytle outdoor works. ••••• In 1910, the editors of the soon-to-be-published Photographic History of the Civil War noticed late in the editorial process that they had almost no southern photographers represented. The tenvolume set — which, according to its editor-in-chief, Francis Trevelyan Miller, was intended to offer the broadest possible view of the war — was nearly devoid of southern and western scenes. One of Miller’s agents, Roy Mason, headed south to find as much surviving material of “Confederate” photographers as he could. While in New Orleans, he learned of Andrew Lytle’s photographs, headed upriver, and found Andrew and Howard in Baton Rouge. After considerable discussion, Mason purchased all of Andrew’s extant glass-plate negatives created between 1862 and 1865. Andrew Lytle, largely unknown outside of Baton Rouge, was about to become famous. The man standing next to this cypress provides a sense of scale for both the volume of the tree and the depth of the water that periodically filled this lowland area. Tide lines on this tree extend above the man’s head. commercial purposes between 1865 and 1885. By 1890, however, the imprint on Lytle studio cards began to carry the message, “All kinds of outdoor Photography executed in the best style.” As Andrew was in his mid-50s when this new emphasis on outdoor photography began, it seems likely that his son Howard was becoming more involved in the studio. During the next ten years, Howard, with or Summer 2008/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 71 In addition to the negatives, Mason brought back a tale of Andrew’s exploits as an active member of the Confederate Secret Service. When The Photographic History of the Civil War was published, it contained many of Andrew’s wartime images. The editors did not radically alter the images, but they printed an incredible version of Andrew’s Civil War experiences that Roy Mason had heard in Baton Rouge. This was the first time that anyone had ever claimed that Lytle was an active member of the “Confederate Secret Service” or had spoken of him as “the Confederate secret agent at Baton Rouge.” This is also the first appearance of the story that: “Andrew David Lytle — a Confederate photographer in the employ of the Confederate Secret Service — trained his camera upon the Federal army which occupied Baton Rouge. It was indeed dangerous work. Lytle would steal secretly up the Observation Tower, which had been built on the ruins of the capitol, and often exposed to rifle shot from the Federals, would with flag or lantern signal to the 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

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