Brady, Mathew B., approximately 1823-1896

Mathew Brady was a prominent American photographer, best known for his battlefield photos during the Civil War.

Mathew B. Brady (ca. 1823-1896) was among the most prominent of early photographers in the U.S. During the Civil War, he and his assistants went into the field to photograph Union troops and battles. Brady maintained studios in New York City and Washington, D.C.

Photographer; Washington, D.C.

Civil War photographer.

Brady Studio, owned by photographer Mathew Brady (1823-1896), was established in Washington, D.C. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Brady made daguerreotypes of influential politicians of his day. During the Civil War, Brady organized a team of photographers and documented the war, producing thousands of images before its end.

Mathew Brady (circa 1823-1896) was an American photographer, best known for his photographs of the American Civil War.

Pioneer photographer most famous for his Civil War photographs.

Matthew B. Brady (1823 (ca.)-1896) was a photographer from Washington, D.C.

Alfred Iverson, Sr., a Representative and a Senator from Georgia; born in Liberty County, Ga., December 3, 1798; attended private schools and graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1820; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1822 and commenced practice in Clinton, Jones County, Ga.; member, State house of representatives 1827-1830; moved to Columbus, Muscogee County, Ga., in 1830 and continued the practice of law; judge of the State superior court 1835-1837; member, State senate 1843-1844; presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1844; elected as a Democrat to the Thirtieth Congress (March 4, 1847-March 3, 1849); again served as judge of the State superior court 1850-1854; elected to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1855, to January 28, 1861, when he withdrew; chairman, Committee on Claims (Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Congresses); resumed the practice of law in Columbus, Ga., until 1868, when he purchased a plantation in East Macon, Ga., and engaged in agricultural pursuits until his death there on March 4, 1873; interment in Linwood Cemetery, Columbus, Ga. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=I000049 (Retrieved 8/19/2009)

Mathew Brady arrived in New York City at the age of sixteen. Soon after taking a job as a department store clerk, he started his own small business manufacturing jewelry cases. In his spare time, Brady studied photography under a number of teachers, including Samuel F. B. Morse, the man who had recently introduced photography to America. Brady quickly discovered a natural gift. By 1844, he had his own photography studio in New York. Brady soon acquired a reputation as one of America's greatest photographers -- producer of portraits of the famous. In 1856, he opened a studio in Washington, D.C., the better to photograph the nation's leaders and foreign dignitaries. As he himself said, "From the first, I regarded myself as under obligation to my country to preserve the faces of its historic men and mothers." He became one of the first photographers to use photography to chronicle national history. At the peak of his success as a portrait photographer, Brady turned his attention to the Civil War. Planning to document the war on a grand scale, he organized a corps of photographers to follow the troops in the field. Friends tried to discourage him, citing battlefield dangers and financial risks, but Brady persisted. He later said, "I had to go. A spirit in my feet said 'Go,' and I went." Mathew Brady did not actually shoot many of the Civil War photographs attributed to him. More of a project manager, he spent most of his time supervising his corps of traveling photographers, preserving their negatives and buying others from private photographers freshly returned from the battlefield, so that his collection would be as comprehensive as possible. When photographs from his collection were published, whether printed by Brady or adapted as engravings in publications, they were credited "Photograph by Brady," although they were actually the work of many people. In 1862, Brady shocked America by displaying his photographs of battlefield corpses from Antietam, posting a sign on the door of his New York gallery that read, "The Dead of Antietam." This exhibition marked the first time most people witnessed the carnage of war. The New York Times said that Brady had brought "home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war." After the Civil War, Brady found that war-weary Americans were no longer interested in purchasing photographs of the recent bloody conflict. Having risked his fortune on his Civil War enterprise, Brady lost the gamble and fell into bankruptcy. His negatives were neglected until 1875, when Congress purchased the entire archive for $25,000. Brady's debts swallowed the entire sum. He died in 1896, penniless and unappreciated. In his final years, Brady said, "No one will ever know what I went through to secure those negatives. The world can never appreciate it. It changed the whole course of my life." Despite his financial failure, Mathew Brady had a great and lasting effect on the art of photography. His war scenes demonstrated that photographs could be more than posed portraits, and his efforts represent the first instance of the comprehensive photo-documentation of a war. Library of Congress American Memory website. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwbrady.html (Retrieved 8/19/2009)

Mathew B. Brady (ca. 1823 - 1896) was a pioneer photojournalist, most famous for documenting the Civil War.

Brady was born in New York to parents who had immigrated from Ireland. He studied photography under Samuel F. B. Morse, who had introduced photography to America. He opened a photography studio in New York in 1845, and in 1849 he moved to Washington, D.C. and opened a studio there, where he photographed several U. S. presidents and many politicians. During the Civil War he trained and employed 23 men to travel and photograph the events of the war; he also took many portraits of both Union and Confederate army officers. After the war, the popularity of his images declined drastically and Brady was forced into bankruptcy, although in 1875 Congress purchased his negatives for $25,000. He died in 1896, and was buried in Washington, D.C.

Mathew B. Brady (ca. 1823-1896) was an American photographer.

Mathew B. Brady was born circa 1823 in Warren County, New York, of Irish decent. He became the student of a portrait painter named William Page. They learned the art of daguerrotypes from Samuel F. B. Morse, and in 1844 Brady opened his own photography studio in New York. He is considered the father of photojournalism and took many portraits of Presidents of the United States along with many Civil War photographs. His photograph of Abraham Lincoln now appears on the five dollar bill and the penny. He married Juliet Handy in 1851. He died from complications of a streetcar accident in the charity ward of Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on January 15, 1896.

Mathew B. Brady (circa 1823-1896) was an American photographer who achieved prominence through his portrait photographs and his organization of photographers to document the American Civil War from his studio in Washington, D.C.

Born in Warren County, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, Brady learned the daguerreotype process in Saratoga, New York. By1844 he operated a daguerreotype studio in New York, New York. The following year he established his gallery of illustrious Americans, which consisted of daguerreotype portraits of American celebrities, a portion which he published as lithographic reproductions in 1850.

In 1849, Brady established a studio in Washington D.C., with the expectation of creating portraits of senators and congressmen, but he closed it within a year due to high operating expenses and local competition. While in Washington, he met Juliette Handy, whom he married two years later. Around this time, Brady's eyesight began to fail and he concentrated on the management of his studios, which included posing sitters for their portraits, while employees created the photographs. In 1853 he opened a second studio in New York, New York.

In 1858, Brady re-established a studio in Washington D.C., with Alexander Gardner as his primary photographer. With the onset of the American Civil War, Brady organized a corps of photographers and assistants to document the people, events, and locales of the war. Photographers in this group included George N. Barnard, Alexander Gardner, James Gardner, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, William Pywell, and Thomas C. Roche. The photographers created conventional portraits of individuals and groups, views of military encampments, and the aftermath of battles. When the images were published or adapted as engravings in publications, they had the credit "Photograph by Brady."

Brady sought to market images of the American Civil War with little success. During the war, he transferred many original glass plate negatives to the photographic supply firm of E. & H. T. Anthony & Company to settle his debts with the company. In 1942 much of this material was purchased by the Library of Congress, where it became the Anthony-Taylor-Rand-Ordway-Eaton Collection.

Brady spent an estimated $100,000 to print ten thousand photographic prints documenting the American Civil War, but a lack of customers required him to sell his studios in New York and Washington and declare bankruptcy. In 1875, he finally sold a bulk of his photographs to the United States government for $25,000. Much of this material became part of the files of the Department of War and was eventually deposited in the United States National Archives and Records Administration. Nonetheless, Brady remained deeply in debt.

By 1883, Brady formed a photographic partnership with his nephew, Levin Corbin Handy, and Samuel C. Chester, to market images from the American Civil War and maintain a photographic studio in Washington. In 1887, Juliette Handy Brady died. Brady continued to face financial difficulties through the remainder of his life. On January 15, 1896, Brady died in the charity ward of Presbyterian Hospital in New York, New York, from complications following a streetcar accident. After his death, his remaining photography files became the property of Levin Corbin Handy.

Levin Corbin Handy (1855-1932), an American photographer, was a nephew and former apprentice of Mathew B. Brady.

Born in Washington, D.C., the son of Samuel S. Handy and Mary A. Handy, Handy began working in the Brady studio as an apprentice in 1867. He soon demonstrated himself as a skilled camera operator, and established his own photographic business in Washington by 1871.

Around 1880, Handy entered a photographic partnership with Samuel C. Chester. They operated a studio in Cape May, New Jersey in 1882. By 1883, Handy and Chester partnered with Brady to market images from the American Civil War. Chester ultimately left the partnership, while Handy maintained the studio at his home and studio located at 494 Maryland Avenue Southwest, Washington, D.C.. When Mathew B. Brady died in 1896, his remaining photography files became the property of Handy.

In Washington, the L.C. Handy Studio offered an array of traditional photographic services, in particular to the Library of Congress and other governmental agencies. He also provided photograph duplication services to patrons of the Library of Congress and to members of the United States Congress.

Handy died at his home on March 23, 1932. He bequeathed his studio and photographic files, including his collection of Mathew B. Brady, to his daughters, Alice H. Cox and Mary H. Evans. In 1954 the Library of Congress purchased approximately ten thousand original, duplicate, and copy negatives from Cox and Evans.