Books with title Mathew Brady: The Camera Is the Eye of History

Often considered the father of American photography, Brady developed new techniques and photographed many famous Americans like President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant. He and his assistants also braved the battlefields and took many important photos during the Civil War. Some of the notable battlefields his operation recorded include Gettysburg and Antietam. Author Don Nardo explores Bradys life from the height of his success to the sad end of his life.

Modern memory of the Civil War owes much to the lens of Mathew Brady, one of the most famous and paradoxical figures in American photography. During a career that spanned the 1840s to the 1890s, Mathew Brady consciously set out to capture the pivotal moments of the second half of the nineteenth century. The best of his brilliant work is here, including his famous portraits of President Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, the Union dead, and Robert E. Lee—haunting images that strove to create the vision of a stable, purposeful republic even as national identity was fragmenting.