Mathew B Brady

Mathew B. Brady c.1823-96, American pioneer photographer, b. Warren co., N.Y. Brady learned the daguerreotype process from S. F. B. Morse and in 1844 opened his own photographic studio in New York City, which brought him widespread fame. He published Gallery of Illustrious Americans in 1850 and five years later experimented successfully with the wet-plate process. He began photographing President Lincoln in 1860. When the Civil War began Brady was authorized to accompany and photograph the armies; through his efforts a vast visual record of the war was preserved. In 1875 the government purchased part of Brady's collection, but the rest passed into private hands after the photographer's financial failure. In 1954 the Library of Congress acquired the enormous Handy collection of Brady's work.

Bibliography: See R. Meredith, Mr. Lincoln's Camera Man (1946, repr. 1974); J. D. Horan, Mathew Brady, Historian with a Camera (1955); H. D. Milhollen and D. H. Mugridge, comp., Civil War Photographs (1961).

Brady, Mathew B. (1823–96) Pioneer US photographer After studying the daguerreotype process with Samuel F. B. Morse, he became the leading US portraitist of his day. President Lincoln was a frequent subject. Brady organized a staff of photographers to make a record of the Civil War. Much of this early war photography is in the Library of Congress.

Brady, Mathew B. (c.1823–96), first important American photographer, became acquainted with the new art while studying painting in Paris with S.F.B. Morse, and won great success during the 1840s by his sincere photographic portraits published in a Gallery of Illustrious Americans (1850). His famous National Photographic Collection of War Views (1869), part of which was purchased by the government, is important as a complete factual record of Civil War battles and camp life, and possesses aesthetic merit because of its simple, literal objectivity.