Mathew Brady
| Mathew Brady | |
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Mathew Brady in 1875
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| Born |
May 18, 1822 Warren County, New York |
| Died | January 15, 1896 (aged 73) New York City |
| Occupation | photographer, photojournalist |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | Juliette Handy Brady |
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Mathew B. Brady (May 18, 1822 – January 15, 1896) was one of the first American photographers, best known for his scenes of the Civil War.
He studied under inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique in America. Brady opened his own studio in New York in 1844, and photographed Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, among other celebrities. When the Civil War started, his use of a mobile studio and darkroom enabled vivid battlefield photographs that brought home the reality of war to the public. Thousands of war scenes were captured, as well as portraits of generals and politicians on both sides of the conflict, though most of these were taken by his assistants, rather than by Brady himself.
After the war, these pictures went out of fashion, and the government did not purchase the master-copies as he had anticipated. Brady’s fortunes declined sharply, and he died in debt.
Brady was born on May 18, 1822 in Warren County, New York near Lake George, the youngest of three children of Irish immigrant parents, Andrew and Samantha Julia Brady. (He himself originally said that he was born in Ireland.) At age 16 he moved to Saratoga, New York, where he met portrait painter William Page. Brady became Page's student. In 1839 the two traveled to Albany, New York, and then to New York City, where Brady continued to study painting with Page, and also with Page's former teacher, Samuel F. B. Morse. Morse had met Louis Jacques Daguerre in France in 1839, and returned to the US to enthusiastically push the new daguerreotype invention of capturing images. At first, Brady's involvement was limited to manufacturing leather cases that held daguerreotypes. But soon he became the center of the New York artistic colony that wished to study photography. Morse opened a studio and offered classes; Brady was one of the first students. In 1844 Brady opened his own photography studio in New York, and by 1845 he began to exhibit his portraits of famous Americans, including the likes of Senator Daniel Webster and poet Edgar Allan Poe. He opened a studio in Washington, D.C. in 1849, where he met Juliet (whom everybody called 'Julia') Handy, whom he married in 1851 and lived with on Staten Island. Brady's early images were daguerreotypes, and he won many awards for his work; in the 1850s ambrotype photography became popular, which gave way to the albumen print, a paper photograph produced from large glass negatives most commonly used in the American Civil War photography.
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