alexander gardner and timothy o'sullivan board the ironclad monitors uss saugus and montauk to make collodionhotographs of the men who conspired first to kidnap and then to kill abraham lincoln. george atzerodt, who lost his nerve and got drunk rather than attempt to kill vice president johnson, is condemned to die. alexander gardner: mr. lewis powell. have a seat. tom hanks: after his savage but failed attempt on the life of secretary of state seward, lewis powell hides in washington for three days before wandering into mary surratt's boarding house and into the arms of the police. alexander gardner: and don't you move now, laddie! tom hanks: powell is sentenced to death. on april 27th, david herold is brought aboard the uss montauk. the young man who followed john wilkes booth to the bitter end is condemned to die. and at the request of secretary of state stanton, alexander gardner takes one more picture on april 27th. lafayette baker: dr. frederick may, can you positively identify the body? dr. may: is there a scar upon the back of its neck? lafayette baker: there is. dr. barnes: let me de

process was so abstract and so mundane, metaphysical in its reach and grizzly in its details, timothy o'sullivan's photo of disrupted -- for the graphs of disrupted confederate burial at gettysburg are some of the few images that open insight into this process. these are among a handful of photographs produced during the war that show the wooden headboards made by soldiers, sharply enough to read the lettering under magnification. in this case, the glass plate negative, which survives enables , us to identify the soldier on on the -- on the far left by a mere five characters of metadata. t, w, s on the top line. and e 3 on the line below it. it is amazing first of all the dead soldiers' comrades took the time, on the second day of the battle before the battle had concluded, that they took the time during the deadliest battle of the civil war, while the outcome was still undecided to do their best to imitate tombstone carving by carefully in sizing and beveling the honorific fonts into the board. they did not have the time to carve the whole name, but they did not need to because the three initials