Mathew Brady, “Union Soldier, US Arsenal”
Mathew Brady was born in 1823 in Lake George, New York. In 1844, he opened a daguerrotype (a type of photographic process) studio in New York City. After opening his studio, he began to photograph prominent socialites, politicians, and authors in the New York area, including Edgar Allan Poe, James Fennimore Cooper, Millard Fillmore, Zachary Taylor, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster. Brady won numerous awards for his daguerrotype portraits, and, in 1850, published The Gallery of Illustrious Americans, which sold for the modern equivalent of around $400. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Brady set off on a self-funded mission to photograph the conflict, hiring a staff of soon-to-be-famous photographers, such as Thomas O’Sullivan and Alexander Gardner, out of his own pocket. Though the project would eventually leave him broke, some of the most powerful images of the war were a result of this venture. His team is responsible for a number of images from the First Battle of Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg. In 1862, Brady published these photographs as The Dead of Antietam, an act that would gain him national notoriety. His was the first group to ever photograph the battlefield after a war but before the removal of the fatalities, giving the public an idea of the carnage. In 1895, Brady was involved in a traffic accident that left him with two broken legs, and he died shortly after in January, 1896.
Sources:
“Mathew Brady: Photographer.” Civil War Trust. Civil War Trust, n.d. Web. 06 May 2015.
History and Evolution of PhotoJournalism 