Matthew B. Brady, Civil War Photographer

When Matthew B. Brady was young he moved to New York and studied photography in the free time that he had. Apparently Brady had found his calling in the field of photography because in 1844 he had opened his own studio of photography right in New York. He photographed a lot of famous people, done in portraits and said, “’.. I regarded myself as under obligation to my country to preserve the facts of its historic men and mothers.’” Matthew Brady was one of the first ever photographers to use his photography to document national history chronologically. Just as his portrait photography was at it’s highest he tried a different approach and turned his attention to Civil War photography. Brady planned to gather a group of photographers that would follow the troops in the battle field in order to document the war on a larger scale. Due to this method ‘his’ pictures, weren’t actually his, just his idea with him behind them. Though he did not take the pictures he was the working behind it all. He was the one that worked behind the scenes to preserve the negatives that the group of photographers had taken as well as to manage the films, cameras, etc. When the work was printed there was the issue of how to print as the actually photographers names or Brady’s name. In the end the result was that the photographs were “credited ‘Photographed by Brady’” even though the work was not taken by him. In 1862 he displayed the pictures in his gallery which allowed America to finally see how gruesome the war actually was, and not glorified at all. Although America was intrigued by the reality of war they weren’t interested in purchasing his work which led to Brady going bankrupt. Matthew risked his life and changed his entire lifestyle to show the world what they were unable to see in the war and to him that was all worth it.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwbrady.html