Mathew B. Brady was already a famous photographer by the time the Civil
War began. But the war gave Brady something else:
The chance to make a RECORD OF A WAR -- this war -- in a way that
had never been done before: WITH TRUE-TO-LIFE PICTURES INSTEAD OF JUST
WORDS. He hired field photographers to travel with the troops,
equipped them with cameras and wagons filled with supplies, and sent
them out with the directive to make a visual record of the war and to
show people scenes they could have only read about before.
The pictures the field photographers sent back were HAUNTING,
BEAUTIFUL, DEVASTATING, AND TOTALLY UNFORGETTABLE. And
thousands of them included the notation "Photo by Brady." Though Brady
didn't actually take the photographs, he was the genius behind them. His
vision and foresight gave the country images that not only touched the
people at the time, but have gone on to leave an indelible mark on the
collective memory of this country. And the name of Mathew Brady will
always be remembered with them.
In Photo By Brady, Jennifer Armstrong tells the story of the Civil War
as seen through the lenses of its recorders. It is a moving and elegant
look at the brutal and deadly time.