Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 - (Page 72)

Confederates on Scott’s Bluff, where the news was relayed to New Orleans and provisions made for smuggling the precious prints through the lines.” A number of facts relevant to the issue cast doubt on the tale. Most glaringly, the photographic technology of the day involved bulky cameras on large, heavy tripods using wet-plate collodion glass-plate negatives with fairly long exposure times. If Lytle had photographed in the field, he would have needed a darkroom wagon nearby in which to prepare the wet plates for exposure and to develop them before they dried. Without a field darkroom, he would have needed a system of runners to carry the wet plates between his darkroom on Main Street, his site in the field, and back to the darkroom. Relays of runners or horsemen carrying boxes to and from a very visible photographer would hardly be secret. Whatever the reality of Andrews activities during the war, when the publisher’s agent left Baton Rouge, a new, much more elaborate tale of Andrew’s alleged covert activities during the war went with him. ••••• In June 1917, Andrew, age 83, died. Surviving family members soon disposed of what remained of the Lytle’s possessions. According to Andrew’s granddaughter, adults carried box after heavy box down the back steps, across the yard, and over to the abandoned well that had once supplied water to the house. They hefted the boxes to the edge of the well and tipped the contents down into the hole, laughing at the sound made by the thousands of glass-plate negatives shattering into worthless shards. With the exception of the glass negatives sold in 1911 and sent north for the Civil War book, Andrew and Howard Lytle’s entire work appears to have disappeared down the THE HILL COLLECTION, HOLDINGS OF THE LSU LIBRARIES backyard well. Not only had the work of one of the few southern photographers active during the Civil War gone missing, but so had sixty years of Baton Rouge history. Despite his heirs having destroyed most of his photographic negatives, a very small portion of the Lytle Studio’s later work had escaped destruction by the family. Early in 1960, a collection of 154 dry-plate glass negatives, created in the closing years of the lives of Howard and Andrew, surfaced in the hands of a citizen of Baton Rouge. Only a handful of fragile negatives and a few hundred positive prints remain to mark two lifetimes of photographic work. In many cases, Andrew’s photography provides the only visual record of that period of the life and times of Baton Rouge and its people. Fortunately, his few remaining photographs capture the day-to-day lives of his community, fleeting moments of great importance, and the long-term changes of his times. LCV Excerpted with permission from Andrew D. Lytle’s Baton Rouge Photographs, 1863-1910 (LSU Press, 2008): www.lsu.edu/lsupress. Mark E. Martin is assistant curator of image resources for the LSU libraries. above: Taking up his camera up into a building across the street, Lytle took this image of the Texas & Pacific Railroad ticket office, 411 Third Street. below: Communities entertained themselves with stage plays, parades, benevolent societies, and clubs. Andrew Lytle stands at the back of a group of men dressed for a burlesque baseball game, ca. 1895. The group poses on the front porch of the Lytle home, 720 North Boulevard. 72 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Summer 2008 THE HILL COLLECTION, HOLDINGS OF THE LSU LIBRARIES http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress

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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