Mathew Brady

Mathew Brady was an American photographer of the nineteenth century whose studio produced some of the earliest and most extensive photographic portraits of prominent Americans, including many sitting presidents and other public figures. He is best remembered for organizing and financing an extensive photographic record of the American Civil War, sending teams of photographers, among them Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan, to document battlefields, camps and the human cost of the conflict. The project brought the reality of war to the American public in an unprecedented way but left Brady financially ruined, since the government did not purchase the archive at the price he expected. His portraits and war images remain foundational to American photographic history and to the historical record of the Civil War itself.