Mathew Brady

Brady organized and financed much of the Civil War photography, but many battlefield images were made by operators working for him, including Alexander Gardner and Timothy H. O'Sullivan. His studios began documenting the war from 1861, creating one of the first large visual records of an American conflict.

Brady photographed Abraham Lincoln several times, including a famous portrait made in New York before the 1860 presidential election. Lincoln later said Brady and the Cooper Union speech helped make him president, though the exact wording is often paraphrased.

Brady invested heavily in wartime photography, expecting the U.S. government to buy the archive. Congress eventually paid for part of the collection, but not enough to save him from serious financial decline.

Brady worked through portrait studios and hired field photographers, while later documentary photographers often built reputations around individual authorship. His Washington and New York studios made images of figures such as Ulysses S. Grant, Walt Whitman, and Abraham Lincoln.