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Mathew
Brady and the Image of History
by Mary Panzer
Paperback from Smithsonian Books
Media Published: 2004-
ISBN: 1588341437
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.
Much of our image of the Civil War era comes from the photographs of
Matthew Brady, and in Matthew Brady and the Image of History Mary
Panzer, curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington,
D. C., examines the work of this American icon. Brady, she writes, "used
art to forge a relationship between photography and history, but when the
memory of Brady the artist vanished, we came to accept his images as facts."
Brady composed his photographs along classical models, always seeking the
heroic in his subjects--who, until the advent of the Civil War, tended
to be the business and social leaders who could afford his fees. Panzer's
account of Brady's wartime work is especially revealing: where assistants
like Timothy O'Sullivan and Alexander Gardner favored realistic studies
of the dead in battle, Brady favored sweeping panoramas that obscured individual
soldiers. For all that, it is Brady we remember as the man who, a contemporary
journalist observed, "has done something to bring home to us the terrible
reality and earnestness of war." The book is richly illustrated with the
work of Brady and his carefully credited assistants, and it deserves a
place in the library of anyone with an interest in 19th-century American
history. |
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Reading
American Photographs: Images As History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans
by Alan Trachtenberg
Paperback from Hill and Wang
ISBN: 0374522499
Winner of the Charles C. Eldredge Prize
In this book, Alan Trachtenberg reinterprets some of America's most
significant photographs, presenting them not as static images but rather
as rich cultural texts suffused with meaning and historical content.
Reading American Photographs is lavishly illustrated with the work
of such luminaries as Mathew Brady, Timothy O'Sullivan, and Walker Evans--pictures
that document the American experience from 1839 to 1938. In an outstanding
analysis, Trachtenberg eloquently articulates how the art of photography
has both followed and shaped the course of American history, and how images
captured decades ago provocatively illuminate the present. |
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Mathew
B. Brady: America's First Great Photographer
by Wayne Youngblood, Ray Bonds
Hardcover from Chartwell Books, Inc.
ISBN: 0785826661
Brady was a celebrated American photographer remembered
for his work in the years before and during the American Civil War. He
took his studio onto the battlefields and created over 10,000 glass-plate
negatives using many photographers. His heritage is a remarkable collection,
one of the first to show the grim horrors of war realistically. |
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Mr.
Lincoln's Camera Man: Mathew B. Brady
by Roy Meredith
Paperback from Dover Publications
ISBN: 048623021X
Over 300 Brady photos reproduced directly from original
negatives. Photos, lively commentary on Jackson, Webster, Grant, Lee, Carnegie,
Barnum, Lincoln, Battle Smoke, Death of Rebel Sniper, Atlanta Just After
Capture, more. |
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Mathew
Brady (55)
by Mary Panzer
Paperback from Phaidon Press
ISBN: 0714840653
This volume - investigating the work of a particular photographer, in
this case, Mathew Brady - comprises a 4000-word essay by an expert in the
field, 55 photographs presented chronologically, each with a commentary,
and a biography of the featured photographer. |
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Ransoming
Mathew Brady
by John Ransom Phillips
Hardcover from Hudson Hills Press
ISBN: 1555953263
--This study includes more than 50 oil paintings, 200 watercolors,
and 40 late nineteenth-century photographs In a series of oils, watercolors,
and prose rich with historical allusion, John Ransom Phillips portrays
the complexity of nineteenth-century pho tographer Mathew Brady. The photographs
Brady made have long served to illustrate an era in American history, most
notably his portraits of Abraham Lincoln and the images from the Civil
War battlefields he captured. Pairing these photographs with his own work,
Philips explores the career of this artist who wanted to make history and
who had the genius to look beyond his New York portrait studio to the Civil
War battlefields. Paradoxically, Brady sent assistants to photograph his
most famous scenes, the battlefields at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Antietam,
instructing them to re-arrange the dead to create images that would capture
the public's interest. |
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