Mathew Brady and the Image of History [Paperback]

Mary Panzer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 2004

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“This book of revisionist art history . . . takes as its subject one of America’s most iconic and revered figures. . . . It opens a new chapter in thinking about the portrayal of American life of the last century.”—New York Times Book Review

“Depicts Brady’s huge range of work for the first time in more than a century and outlines . . . his ambitious quest to create a kind of visual history of America.”—Washington Post

“Ms. Panzer’s thoughtful, occasionally elegiac book brings up many of the issues involved in the recording and manufacture of history through images . . . [Brady] wrote history on the spot so that future citizens could read in his pictures what their country stood for when it was still young.”—Vicki Goldberg, author of American Photography: A Century of Images, in New York Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books (June 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1588341437
• ISBN-13: 978-1588341433
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 0.6 x 11 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #923,960 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars dont expect much in the way of battlefield pics, September 1, 2006

By 

guineapig (sf, ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mathew Brady and the Image of History (Paperback)

this is almost entirely a book of brady's portrait work, which is fine and dandy, but there is almost nothing in what one would typically think of as civil war photos.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this book is the last word -and best word- on Brady, December 12, 1997

By 

Elsa Dorfman (Cambridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: MATHEW BRADY & IMAGE OF HIST (Hardcover)

This book is the last word -- and the best word-- on Brady. It is the perfect gift for the photography buff, the portrait buff. the civil war buff. The author has written a terrific text which places Brady in context. After reading the book and looking at the images you understand why Brady died flat broke--but yr heart breaks for him.

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes I would at enjoy this book, December 12, 2011

By 

matthew smith "Matt Smith" (scottsdale, az.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mathew Brady and the Image of History (Paperback)

I went to school in pennsylvannia for a year. While I was there I always got the feeling that this once a battlefield. I guess some of the ghosts there stay on!Civil War Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)