Mathew Brady – Historian with a Camera
James D. Horan
Bonanza Books, 1955, 264 pages
ISBN 0-517-001047

Mathew Brady is widely known as "the Civil War photographer," and for good reason. Although he wasn't the first person to photograph a battlefield, the extensive set of photos that he and his team made of the Civil War were shocking to viewers of that time, and constitute a valuable historical record.

But Brady was much more than just a war photographer. Prior to the Civil War he was the most successful and popular portrait photographer in the United States. He photographed many politicians, foreign dignitaries, scientists, scholars, and entertainers. His business was a prototype of the modern photo agency: he would hire photographers and send them out to shoot various subjects, building a library of images that he then marketed to book and magazine publishers.

When the Civil War started, he knew that he had to cover it. He received permission to travel with the Union armies, but had to pay all of his expenses out of his own pocket. By the end of the war he was deeply in debt, and his war photos did not sell well to a public that was sick of war. He eventually went bankrupt, and his business never fully recovered.

The book is divided into two sections. The first section is a detailed and fascinating biography of Brady. It is 90 pages in length, and includes a number of illustrations. The second section presents nearly 500 photographs made by Brady or the photographers who worked for him. These photographs cover Brady's entire career, not just the Civil War. Each photograph has a caption giving (when known) the photo's subject, date, location, and photographer.

This book is quite old, being first published in 1955, but it's still a fine introduction to the life and work of Mathew Brady.