biografia di Mathew B. BRADY (1823-1896)

Birth place: Warren County, NY

Death place: NYC

Addresses: Primarily NYC and Wash., DC

Profession: Photographer, artist and lithographer

Studied: With William Page, Saratoga, NY; Samuel F.B. Morse, NYC (instructed him in photography)

Exhibited: American Institute, annual fairs (won Gold Medal for his daguerreotype at the 1849 fair); London, 1851 (med.); Centennial Expo., Phila., 1876; NMAA, 1997 (retrospective)

Work: LOC; National Archives (Wash., DC)

Comments: A pioneer in photography, Brady's name is associated primarily with his photographic record of the Civil War. He made his start as an artist and lithographer. He opened a successful daguerrean gallery in NYC (1844-53) making portraits of political figures (including almost all of the U.S. Presidents from John Quincy Adams to William McKinley) as well as people prominent in other fields. He eventually published his portraits in The Gallery of Illustrious Americans (1850). His Civil War pictures are important both as historical documents and as a grisly record of the physical horrors of battle. Brady"s career as a photographer was spent mainly in NYC and Wash. DC and on the battle fields of the Civil War. In 1881, his Washington gallery was foreclosed upon, and he worked for other photographers until 1894, when he was run over by a carriage. He died penniless. Author: The Gallery of Illustrous Americans (1850).

Sources: G&W; DAB; Peters, America on Stone; NYCD 1848-49; Am. Inst. Cat. 1849; Meredith, Mr. Lincoln's Camera Man: The Story of Mathew Brady. Also, see James Horan, Mathew Brady: Historian with a Camera (1955); and, more recently, Mathew Brady and the Image of History (Smithsonian, 1997); Welling, 374; Newhall, The Daguerreotype in America, 140; Witkin & London, 93