Mathew Brady | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Mathew Brady

Born 1822 or 1823
Warren County, New York
Died January 15, 1896
New York City, New York

Civil War photographer
His studio produced many of the war's
most famous photographs

Mathew Brady is the most famous of the many American photographers who documented the Civil War in pictures. He did not personally take many of the photographs that made him famous. Instead, failing eyesight forced him to hire teams of photographers to take care of the actual camera work. But it was Brady who led the effort to use photography as a way of recording the events of the Civil War for future generations. "[Mathew Brady] would serve history and country," wrote Carl Sandburg in The Photographs of Abraham Lincoln. "He would prove what photography could do by telling what neither the tongues nor the letters of soldiers could tell of troops in camp, on the march, or mute and bullet-riddled on the ground."

Child of Immigrants

Mathew Brady was born around 1823 to Irish immigrants who settled in New York state in the early 1820s. The youngest of five children, Brady spent his early years working on the family farm. It was during his midteens that Bradyfirst began to suffer from problems with his eyesight.

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