HESLER, Alexander

HESLER, Alexander. (Montreal, Canada, July 12, 1823--1895) At twelve years of age, Hesler went to Vermont, and attended school until twenty years of age. He then came to Racine, Wisconsin in 1843, and engaged in the hardware business for four years. In 1847, going to Buffalo, New York, he began his career as an artist, and in 1848-49 worked at Madison, Wisconsin, In the spring of 1849, he went to Galena. Illinois. (1) Active in the 1850s and early 1860s, Hesler learned daguerrotype and ambrotype photography. With many of his fellow craftspeople, however, he was trained in glass plate photography in the 1850s and specialized in it. He began his photograph business in Galena, Illinois and then operated a studio in Dubuque from 1850-1851. He moved to Chicago in 1855. (2) Using a portable darkroom, he also produced landscape scenes from nearby states and territories of what is now the American Midwest. (3)

Hesler's known portraits include photographs of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. In the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln's friends took steps to have Hesler's images copied and recirculated. (4)

Hesler was an award-winning photographer whose goal was to create photographs of lasting artistic value. He was recognized for the quality of both his portrait work and his outdoor photography. Upon Hesler's retirement in 1865, he transferred his Chicago studio and negatives to a fellow photographer, George Bucher Ayres. Several of Hesler's best-known images of Lincoln are platinum prints produced by Ayres from Hesler negatives. Hesler's 1860 glass-plate negatives were used after Lincoln's death as bases for further images of the President, including busts by sculptors such as Gutzon Borglum. (5)

Alexander Hesler is buried in Racine, Wisconsin.

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Source:

1. "Chicagology," Online: https://chicagology.com/prefire/

2. Treadwell, T. K. and Darrah, William C. "Photographers of the United States of America," National Stereoscopic Association, 1994, Online: http://stereoworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/US-PHOTOGRAPHERS.pdf

3. "Alexander Hesler," Wikipedia. Online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hesler

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.