Matthew Brady
Brady photo; Antietam
Matthew Brady was one
of the most celebrated photographers in American
history, best known for his photographs of the Civil
War.
Brady was born on in
1822 in Warren County, New York. At the gae of 17,
he moved to New York City. He was interested in photography
at an early age and had his own studio by the age
of 18 in 1845. In 1849, he opened a studio in Washington
D.C. Two years later, he married Juliette Handy.
By 1850, he had become a well-known photographer
and had already won numerous awards for his work,
particularly photographs of famous pople.
During the Civil War,
Brady took numerous photographs of battlefields.
He first took pictures during the First Battle of
Bull Run, where he nearly got captured. He employed
23 other photographs and gave them each a travelling
darkroom. It was these assistants who captured most
of the scenes from the battlefields. Due to deteriorating
eyesight, Brady seldom went to battlefields after
Bull Run. In 1862, he put on an exhibition in Washington
that featured scenes from the Antietam Battlefields.
The phootgraphs captured the depth of the bloody
struggle, depicting corpses and injured soldiers.
The images were extremely influential, and brought
home the horrors of war to everyday Americans who
otherwise would never know.
Brady spent over $100,000
producing Civil War photographs, but to his dismay,
the U.S. Government never purchased them. Consequently,
he lost his studio and fell into bankruptcy. Brady
died in 1896 in New York City, after being run over
by a streetcar. He died with penniless.
Today, however, Brady's
photographs are among the only visual tributes to
the Civil War. He took pictures of numerous generals
and politicans, including Abraham Lincoln. One of
his photos of Lincoln was used on the U.S. five-dollar
bill.
