And how it changed in the following years. He also talks about the difference in subject matter and composition between brady and other photographers at the time. This hourlong event was part of the lincoln forums annual similar symposium in gettysburg, pennsylvania. Thank you for having me. Its a pleasure to be here again. Our first speaker this morning robert wilson, the author of a new wellreceived book on Matthew Brady. Mr. Wilson has written for many prominent newspapers and journals and held editorial posts at many of those same institutions. Hes currently editor of the american scholar. Hes written two previous books as well as a certain somewhere writers on the place they remember. Hell be talking about Matthew Brady today. Brady is an interesting character. Weve all looked at dozens, probably hundreds of bradys photographs. I suspect many of you join me having not known much about Matthew Brady, the man himself who took much of these photographs. He not only captured history but also shaped it. Well talk about the 1860 photograph of Abraham Lincoln and 1864 photographs of Abraham Lincoln that not only shaped history but captured it as well. Mr. Wilson will talk about his story of trying to recapture Matthew Brady. Its a tough thing to do. Brady didnt leave much in the way of writings. A few letters, few diaries. Brady. Its a tough thing to do. Gnat thou brady didnt leave much in the way of writings. A few letters, few diaries. Its a tough nut to crack to figure out what was going on with brady, what stories he was trying to get across, how intentional he was in the art he was trying to create. Hopefully after the first hour well know more about that. Please join me in welcoming mr. Wilson to the stage. Thank you for that thank you for that great introduction. Thanks, too, to Harold Holtzer for inviting me here today and for other kindnesses. Thanks to all of you have given the warm welcome my wife martha and me the last day weve been here. It occurred to me to write about Matthew Brady about a decade ago as i was finishing my first book, a biography of a 19th century explorer named clarence king. After the civil war, king had led one of the important Scientific Missions of the west and was the first person to incorporate photography into that sort of study. He chose a man to accompany him, timothy o. Sullivan who then worked with king on the survey for three years. He had been a protege of Matthew Brady, quite possibly meeting him in the 1850s as a boy living on Staten Island where brady had a home while running a photographic portrait gallery in manhattan. As i read about osullivan, i realized there was no firstrate biography of Matthew Brady, who i thought deserved one. Heres a flattering painting of mr. Brady from mr. Holtzers museum. How little i knew was accurate even though i spent a year reading enough to write a proposal for the book. It should have struck me, given the industry of scholars and of journalists such as myself, that if there was not a good book about such an important figure there might be a reason why. In fact, there are two good reasons. One is that for someone who was in the public eye for half a century, he left only a lightly marked trail, as jarod mentioned. This was true even though the name became a brand for both portrait photography and civil war photography. And he knew everyone who mattered in this time, including some of the most prominent journalists. And he was dedicated to making photography a medium for the recording of history. He did not keep a journal or a memoir, only a handful of letters and spoke about his career in detail to a few journalists and friends only late in life. When the natural tendency of many people is to embroidery the past, as im reaching late in life status, i understand that phenomenon. This is a sketch that was done of brady by an artist and sculptor names james kelly. Brady stopped into his studio on the southeast corner of Washington Square in new york and kelly was up on a kind of up on a ladder working on a model for a sculpture and he came down, drew the sketch handed it to imprad. Brady, and brady signed it. There arent a lot of examples of bradys signature. Handed it back and said something like, you better my boys, meaning hed done a better likeness than all the photographers who worked for brady might have done. This lack of primary sources is one reason such a central cultural figure of his time has no good biography. The second reason is in the years since his death, this pausety of fact have led some to go beyonds brady own embroidery to pure speculation and fabrication. One of the things i thought i knew about brady that were wrong. The first is what almost everyone thinks they know about him. That he was not just a civil war photographer, but he was in some sense the civil war photographer. That he himself managed to take all those photographs we have become familiar with in the past few years as the 150th anniversary of the war has rolled along. Its true we see a number of the same photographs again and again. This one became a u. S. Postal stamp of the 150th anniversary of the battle of geties burg. And this one was one of the first photographs of the dead in warfare ever taken. Confederate bodies gathered for burial after the 1862 battle of anteitam. Its possible one man could have scurried around and taken all of the photographs especially since there are few photographs. None of the photographs or photos he took survived the day. They were probably survived in the panic retreat of the union army. He did have this heroic photograph of himself made in his washington studio the next day. Several publication including the New York Times wrongly reported or at least strongly implied he brought photographs back from the battlefield. After bull run where he could be forgiven for having been spooked by his proximity to live ammunition, he stayed miles away from any battlefield for almost two years. When he traveled to gettysburg about a dozen days after the fighting had ended. Then there was another lapse after cold harbor in virginia and the beginnings of the stalemate in petersburg in june 1864 when he was back in the field. Thats basically it. Although he did go to richmond after appomattox in 1865 and succeeded in taking photographs of robert e. Lee soon after he had returned from the war to the house where mrs. Lee was living. And within a few days of lincolns death. I thought a lot about why lee posed for the famous photographs. He apparently agreed almost the instant he returned to richmond. You can imagine how weary he must have felt in every single way, and his son wrote later theres nothing he liked so little as having his photograph made. But lincoln died the day that lee returned to richmond. And i suspect there was some sense that he had some sense of responsibility to present that calm visage at this dangerous time in the nations history. Im sure youre all familiar with these photographs. This particular one where the part of the door behind him makes him look like christ on the cross, had some resonance in the south for years afterwards. Still as many as 10,000 civil war photographs are attributed to brady or his studio, how can that be . Heres where things get a bit complicated. Brady began his career early in the degara type air remarks opening a Portrait Studio on Lower Broadway in 1844 just below city hall park. And across fulton street, street of st. Pauls chapel. This is right near the World Trade Center site. This was only five years after the de garrett type process had been introduced in paris. A busy Photo Gallery like bradys became, required a lot of workers. The metal plates on which the images appeared needed to be buffed and treated. And after the prepared plate was exposed, the image was fixed. Washed in a gold solution and possibly handcolored and framed in a leather case. Different people performed each of these tasks and a later brady studio had as many as 25 employees. The person who took the photograph was generally not brady himself but someone called an operator, the man who operated the camera. Brady owned and ran the business, hired the workers, made all the aesthetic and technical choices and often greeted his customers and escorted them to a position in front of the camera, putting them at their ease and setting up the photo. Early in his career, he decided he wanted to specialize in images of wellknown people so he spent a lot of time in pursuit of them. This is a picture of the Great British scientist, Michael Faraday that brady got in london in 1851. You are probably familiar with the surfaces are very are very easy to actually rub off. I kind of love the way this picture has aged. I think its quite beautiful in that regard. The degarrett types made in his gallery, it was a gallery because he also placed his images of the famous in a Reception Room were known as photos by brady. This is a rendering of a later studio brady had. So, his name became his brand. He was often called brady of broadway and his product, the photographs made by his workers, were known by his name. In a business context this is pretty easy to understand. Businesses are generally named for their owner but the owner is not always personally responsible for everything the business introduces. In a photography context where we think of a photographer as the person behind the camera this is less easy to understand and its led to charges that brady took credit in a deceptive way for work his employees performed. By the time the civil war began, brady had been operating galleries for 17 years. In addition to the ones in new york, he was now on broadway and tenth street. He had an 1858 opened a business in washington, located on pennsylvania avenue between sixth and seventh. His goal had become within his first three years on broadway to take photographs not just of famous people but of every important american. And almost everyone, it seemed had posed for his camera. He had kept up with the rapid changes in technology and had even innovated a few. And was now taking studio portraits beautifully printed on paper, often in large sizes and expensive, but also mass produced calling card sized photographs or stereo graphs what we call 3d photo. A similar process on glass called ambra type was still in use. Heres an ambra type taken of john c. Fremont. But for the most part, brady was now creating negatives on glass in a variety of formats that could be used to make an unlimited number of paper prints. Probably the most important photograph brady ever took was of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 when he gave his famous cooper union speech, which made him a viable president ial candidate. This was widely produced and after lincoln saw brady again when he arrived in washington for the inauguration, lincoln supposedly said, brady and the Cooper Institute made me president. Brady seems to be the only source for this quotation. So make of it what you will. I think its undeniable and others said as well, that this image was did have an impact. After the Southern States seceded, volunteer state militia units flooded into washington to protect the capitol to what was to be an imminent attack by the rebels. They often went to the brady studio on to have a portrait made to send back home. I feel like im losing on jeopardy by not using my clicker. Brady began to send operators into the field to amount to studio portraits out of doors. Part of bradys impulse was that the civil war was a big subject, history would want to know about. A continuation of his longtime goal to photograph people who would be interesting in history. These camplike brady had several teams out taking pictures before the war began. After bull run, this practice continued and some of his men who became famous in their own right, his washington gallery manager alexander gardner, Timothy Sullivan and others began working for the u. S. Army, photocopying maps and orders and helping with top graphical engineers help with spots for camps, hospitals and other infrastructures. As they served the army they continued in bradys employ sending him more photographs for his growing war collection. After the rebels abandoned manassas in the spring of 1862 brady sent his men out to take photographs of the famous sites from the first battle there, but these images were not particularly interesting as photographs. Probably the most significant pictures taken at this time were the socalled quacker guns at centreville centreville. Logs made to look like cannon which were to persuade the lvr already timid mcclelland not to attack. I love the way you know theres such a wonderful spirit of fun in so many of these civil war pictures and these guy here pretending to light the fake can is an example of that. Many pictures taken around washington before the war had people, you know, making human pyramids and doing silly things like that. Obviously, they didnt know what was to come. This picture was taken by george barnard. Barnard and james gibson, who also had illustrious careers throughout the war, took these pictures together. One of them, james gibson, accompanied mcclellands army on the Peninsula Campaign where he took a number of the first seminal photographs of the year. This is a this is a stereograph. You can see the image begins to repeat itself. This is a Hospital Camp at savages station. Harp harry potterers weekly brings this. How patiently and still they lie, these brave men who bleed and are maimed for us. It is a picture which is more elegant than the sternest speech. So brady sold these photographs his men took. He also copied and added to his collection that others had taken. Some of which he appropriated with permission and some of which he did not. Copies photos to which he had no legitimate claim is hard to defend but in fairness, it was commonly done. By any means available brady accumulated images from the civil war and the providence of many of them is not known and probably never will be. His competitors were less happy about this as we are today and there were squabbles over who owned or had taken what. Because brady kept the collection together long after the war and even managed to sell a part of it to the government we have him to thank for the vastness of the photographic record of the war that has come down to us. It ought to be said that almost every photographer of the war worked for brady at one time or another. When late in life he told a reporter that i had men in all parts of the army, like a rich newspaper. That phrase a rich newspaper has to make you chuckle today. It wasnt true in the sense that these men were all working for him at the same time. But in some sense they still were, at least in his mind his men. So brady was not the photographer of the civil war. I mentioned i had other misconceptions about him even after i read a few amount. Some had grown out of what ive been talking about and did not come from writers looking to make a good story but from scholars and curators. Plus there was bradys suspicious enintraneural zeal. Phinneaus t. Barnum. Barnums American Museum was across the street from the fulton studio. If brady was a huckster then he was no artist. I find this pretty foolish but effects linger today in public collections who curators are reluctant to attribute photographs that are clearly to him and sometimes they attribute them to his studio. Sometimes they wont even attribute them to his studio. But this is changing. What i would like to do is hint at the case i made in the book that brady was not only a photographer but a conscious artist. A person who did not just oversee the taking of pictures but often had a real idea of what he was doing. One of the things that intrigued people about photography in its first decades is that it seemed like a completely mechanical art form. Degarrett types were often referred to as sun paintings because the images appeared not by the hand of an artist but by the work of light passing through the mechanism of a camera. In a world increasingly under the sway of science, photography was the first objective medium of art. Bradys first connection to the world outside, rural upstate new york, where he spent his childhood, was a charismatic young painter named william paige, a protege of samuel morris, the inventor of the telegraph, also a well known portrait painter of his day. This is a picture of morse that brady took in the 1850s. Brady sometimes claimed. He was at least on the fringe of artistic circles of new york. The sorts of portraits he himself began to take undoubtedly owed a debt to portrait painting. In the poses, the backgrounds the back drops and the lighting, and by the late 1850s brady was specializing in what he called brady imperials, large size portrait prints on salt paper that like degarrett type hs a gold wash and then were often hand painted. This is a portrait of a sculptor named harriet hosmer. It wasnt colored but you can see that her jacket and on her hat, the ribbon on her hat, were inked, enhanced with black ink to make it more dramatic. Three photographs brady took more than 150 years ago at gettysburg speak explessicitly to this question of whether photography is mechanical process. Between the battle of anteitam where gardner had taken images of the dead that brady displayed in his broadway gallery and gettysburg, gardner set up his own business around the corner from brady in washington and taken with him many of bradys best photographers, including timothy oh sullivan and james f. Gibson. On the afternoon of july 5th two days after the fighting had stopped. The three photographers approached from the south on a road passing by a farm where the dead had not yet been buried and as gardner and gibson had at antietam, the three began taking photographs of unberried confederates. The three men spent 48 hours on the battlefield, taking about 60 images. Threefourths of which were of lifeless bodies or other aspects of the horrors of war. Brady did not arrive for another week and he and his men did not start taking photographs until july 15th. By then almost all the bodies had been buried and the most visible signs of battle had been cleaned up. The battlefield was returning to the placid rural scene it had been two weeks before. Be