Mathew Brady
Portraits of a Nation
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
The first narrative biography of the Civil War's pioneering visual historian, Mathew Brady, known as the "father of American photography."
Mathew Brady's attention to detail, flair for composition, and technical mastery helped establish the photograph as a thing of value. In the 1840s and '50s, "Brady of Broadway" photographed such dignitaries as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Dolley Madison, Horace Greeley, the Prince of Wales, and Jenny Lind. But it was during the Civil War that Brady's photography became an epochal part of American history.
The Civil War was the first war in history to leave a detailed photographic record, and Brady knew better than anyone the dual power of the camera to record and excite, to stop a moment in time and preserve it. More than ten thousand war images are attributed to the Brady studio. But as Wilson shows, while Brady himself accompanied the Union army to the first major battle at Bull Run, he was so shaken by the experience that throughout the rest of the war he rarely visited battlefields except well before or after a major battle, instead sending teams of photographers to the front. Mathew Brady is a gracefully written and beautifully illustrated biography of an American legend-a businessman, a suave promoter, a celebrated portrait artist, and, most important, a historian who chronicled America during the gravest moments of the nineteenth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Everyone's seen his photos of a confidently cross-armed Whitman, a beardless Lincoln, Civil War dead on the battlefield but few know much about Mathew Brady, the man behind the camera. In this detailed biography, Wilson (editor of The American Scholar) examines Brady's rise and fall as the principal photographer of 19th-century America, a "master of promotion" and seminal documentarian of the Civil War. With a keen understanding of photography's potential as an art form and medium for news, Brady catapulted himself before the public eye by shooting numerous famous personages indeed, through this extensive network of movers and shakers, a portrait develops of a rapidly changing nation. Wilson does a grand job of bringing Brady's era to life rich descriptions of New York City (the location of Brady's studio) and Washington, D.C., ground the book in a strong sense of place, and the author's contextualization of numerous historic photographs adds depth to Brady's magnificent work. Those with an interest in photography and the Civil War (and especially fans of Timothy Egan's Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher) will savor this telling glimpse into the America first captured on film, and the man who made it happen. 16-page color insert, b&w illus. throughout.
