Civil War in Focus – Mathew Brady’s Photography 🎩🥁
A century before smartphones, Mathew Brady and his team pioneered war photography. Brady (1820s–1896) organized dozens of photographers to document the Civil War – from bloody battlefields to stoic portraits. The National Archives holds thousands of these glass-plate images in the Brady collection (many originally War Dept records).
Brady’s photographs fundamentally changed how the public saw war. For the first time, civilians could see the reality of camp life, the aftermath of battles, and the faces of soldiers.
President Lincoln credited Brady’s portrait of him at Antietam with helping win re-election in 1864 (saying “Brady and the Cooper Union speech made me President.”)
Brady’s crew didn’t just photograph battlefields but everyday stillness and the daily grind of camp life for soldiers and crew.
Field kitchens were a favorite Brady subject – this rare stereo image shows Army cooks preparing stew in big cauldrons over fire pits.
Mathew Brady’s photographs are freely accessible in NARA’s Catalog. See faces of named soldiers, panoramic ruins of Richmond, or the eerie stillness of Antietam right after the fight. It’s a 160-year-old visual archive that still speaks volumes about honor, sacrifice, and the birth of photojournalism.
