Mathew Brady’s Portraits: Images as History, Photography as Art

ICP Midtown: June 12-September 6, 1998

Mathew Brady's Portraits: Images as History, Photography as Art showcases the work of the most famous American photographer of the last century with over 100 images, and marks the first time since his studio closed over a century ago that the full range of his work is gathered together in one place. This retrospective of the work of pioneer nineteenth century photographer Mathew Brady (1823?-1896) will be on view at the International Center of Photography Midtown, 1133 Avenue of the Americas (at 43rd Street), New York City, from June 12 to September 6, 1998. Also on view is equipment used by Brady and his contemporaries.

In his early daguerreotypes and his famous Civil War images, Brady succeeded in documenting his time period for later generations, and participated in the formation of a national identity at a time when the very idea of national identity was in question. The exhibition surveys the most significant decades of his career from his efforts as a daguerreotypist in New York in the early 1840s to the period of his bankruptcy in Washington, D.C. in 1872, and explores the possibility of discerning history through and from images.

The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, has organized this exhibition. Mary Panzer, Curator of Photographs, curated the exhibition and wrote the accompanying publication, Mathew Brady and the Image of History (Smithsonian Institution Press).

Mathew Brady was born around 1823 in Warren County, New York, outside of Albany. In the early 1840s he traveled to New York City, where he began working with daguerreotypes, a newly developed method of producing unique, highly-detailed images on silver plates which was the earliest incarnation of photography. In 1844, while New York was becoming the nation's cultural center, he opened his first portrait studio on a prosperous section of Broadway. While he is best known today for his Civil War photographs, it was the portraits of the nationŐs leaders, politicians, military heroes, artists, writers, performers, and scientists that first captured attention. Some of the people who posed for his camera were Abraham Lincoln, General Robert E. Lee, Jenny Lind, Thomas Cole, Clara Barton, Jefferson Davis, Walt Whitman, and P.T. Barnum.

Brady was at once a businessman, an artist, and an entertainer. At his peak in the early 1860s, he ran studios and galleries in New York and Washington, D.C., which became tourist attractions. His studios produced work in nearly every photographic medium that existed at the time such as daguerreotypes, stereographs, ambrotypes, salted paper prints, cartes de visites, and hand-colored prints. As the director of the studios, rather than taking the pictures himself, his role involved generating business, soliciting celebrities to sit for him, and supervising assistants who prepared the plates, operated the cameras, and printed and embellished the images under his direction. By 1853, he employed 25 cameramen, technicians, and salesmen. He was also well known for being a showman with a penchant for spectacle. As Panzer writes, one of his desires was "to re-create a stroll on Broadway on the walls of a single room."

Panzer also notes that "like his friends Horace Greeley and P.T. Barnum," who were influential in the popular press and entertainment industry respectively, "Brady belonged to a generation of New Yorkers who shaped the public sphere for a growing American middle class." His photographs present a triumphant, forward-looking nation, characterized by idealized images of national heroes, celebrities, politicians, and armies. He drew on personalities from every aspect of political, cultural, and military life, in order that future generations know "what manner of men and women we Americans of 1860 were."

Brady's rarely seen work with painters and printmakers, with which he wanted to create, according to Panzer, a new kind of "heroic portraiture that could combine the accuracy of a photograph with the dignity of an oil painting," will also be on view. The exhibition for the first time will include examples of these paintings such as "The Last Hours of Lincoln" (1865-1868), which was done with painter Alonzo Chappel. The painting was reconstructed from several photographs of mourners who came to visit the dying president.

With the advent of paper prints which by then were called "photographs" and modern development techniques, his studio began to manufacture what were called "Brady Imperials," which were printed from 20-by-17-inch glass negatives. Another breakthrough came when his employee, the distinguished photographer Alexander Gardner, introduced him to the cartes-de-visites camera that could inexpensively make four 3-by-2-inch identical portraits at one time. These were mass-produced and became popular items to collect and give as gifts.

Brady opened a branch gallery in Washington, D.C., in 1858, which prospered under the management of Gardner. Under Brady and GardnerŐs leadership the studio produced powerful and often shocking photographs of the Civil War. Brady dispatched teams that took thousands of group and individual portraits in their travels with the Union Army. After five years working under Brady, Gardner left the studio to set up shop for himself. By 1865, BradyŐs wealth and influence began to decline.

Brady was always a risk taker. In 1872, his career suffering much from a lack of interest and business practices that no longer proved profitable, filed for bankruptcy and closed his New York studios. Three years later after an unsuccessful attempt to sell his archives to a museum, the United States War Department finally agreed to purchase part of his collection for $25,000.

It was not until the last few years of his life when he re-opened his gallery, which he called "a museum of historical photography," that he was rediscovered by a new post-Civil War generation, especially young journalists, who looked to him and his pictures with great curiosity as a bridge to a seemingly irrevocable past. Brady died in 1896, from complications due to a broken leg that he received in a traffic accident a year before. He is buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

The presentation in New York is supported by the Susan and Elihu Rose Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, and the Exhibitions Committee of the International Center of Photography.

Public Programs at ICP Midtown
Mathew Brady on Broadway, 1845-1860
Thursday, June 18, 1998 - 7:00pm

Speaker Mary Panzer, Curator of Photographs,National Portrait Gallery and author of Mathew Brady and the Image of History, will examine the world where American celebrity began, in New York inthe decades before the Civil War.

Publication
Mathew Brady and the Image of History by Mary Panzer.
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997. 256 pp, 79 duotones. 72 black & white illustrations, 9 x 11'. Hardcover Price $45.00/Member's Price $40.50.