Mathew B. Brady (May 18, 1822 – January 15, 1896) was one of the first American photographers. He studied under inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique in America. Brady opened his own studio in New York in 1844, and photographed Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, among other celebrities. When the Civil War started, his use of a mobile studio and darkroom enabled vivid battlefield photographs that brought home the reality of war to the public. The thousands of photographs which Mathew Brady’s photographers (such as Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan) took have become the most important visual documentation of the Civil War, and have helped historians and the public better understand the era – wikipedia
I’ve always loved looking at some of these old portraits of historic figures of the past. In the early days of photography, Matthew Brady had a simple “shutter”. When they were ready to expose the film, they simply removed the lens cap by hand and then put it back on after a predetermined length of time. Since the photographic plates used in those days were not very sensitive, exposures of five or ten minutes were common. – NYIP
photos by Matthew Brady
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