Kat Smutz presents a brief summary on the life of the American Civil War photographer, Mathew Brady
Mathew (with one ‘t’) Brady might well be considered the first photojournalist and has been called “The Father of Photojournalism” for his work in documenting the American Civil War. Because of the extensive work by Brady and his associates, we know much about the American Civil War and the latter half of the 19th century than would have been otherwise.
Brady studied under daguerreotypist Samuel FB Morse, inventor of the Morse code. By 1844, Brady was already working from his own studio in New York. A year later, he began exhibiting portraits of famous Americans. In 1849, he opened a studio in Washington, DC, where he met and married Juliet Handy in 1851.
Brady’s work began with daguerreotypes, which were printed on tin, but in the 1850s he began working with ambrotypes, and later, albumen prints that could be reproduced on paper. It was the albumen prints that were most common among his Civil War work.
Photographing the American Civil War
When the American Civil War erupted, Brady seized an opportunity. He requested permission to photograph the war. His permission was written and signed by Abraham Lincoln himself, and Brady was known to carry it about with him most of the time.
It was during the Civil War that Brady developed his traveling darkroom so that he could take his studio into the field. He employed more than twenty men, including Alexander Gardner and Timothy H. O’Sullivan, to go out to the battlefields, each with a darkroom on wheels. Many of his photos were graphic in their details of the aftermath of battles. For many Americans, Brady’s exhibitions of such photos gave them their first look at the realities of war.
Brady invested more than $100,000 and created some 10,000 plates of the war in anticipation of being reimbursed by the government. But the government refused and he was forced into bankruptcy. Congress finally granted him $25,000 in 1875. But Brady was still heavily in debt. Depressed, he lost his eyesight and his wife, who died in 1887. Following a streetcar accident, he died a pauper in Presbyterian Hospital in New York on January 15, 1896.
Kat Smutz
Read more about the Civil War in The American Civil War In An Hour
See also Clara Barton – Civil War nurse and founder of the American Red Cross