Mathew Brady gave conflicting accounts of his birth, in Warren County, New York, or in Ireland. As a teenager in Saratoga he studied under portrait painter William Page, who introduced him in New York City to Samuel Morse, then promoting Louis Daguerre’s process. Brady started by making cases for daguerreotypes, opened a Broadway studio in 1844, exhibited a portrait of Edgar Allan Poe, and opened a Washington studio in 1849. He photographed 18 of the 19 presidents of his era, missing only William Henry Harrison, and stamped every image Photo by Brady, whoever operated the camera.

When the war began he sold cartes de visite to families of departing soldiers, then won Lincoln’s permission to photograph the armies at his own expense. With failing eyesight, he directed a team of more than 20, including Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan, who hauled wet plate darkroom wagons to battlefields. His October 1862 exhibition The Dead of Antietam showed corpses to New Yorkers for the first time. He spent over $100,000 on about 10,000 plates, but a war-weary public lost interest, Congress paid only $25,000 in 1875, and he died penniless in 1896.

• The Brady stand used an iron neck rest to hold sitters still during long exposures.
• He was the first to persuade the New York Herald to run distinct fonts in his advertisements.
• Brady came under fire at First Bull Run, Fredericksburg and Petersburg.
• His negatives passed to supplier E. & H.T. Anthony, and the story of plates becoming greenhouse glass is considered a myth.
• Historian Bob Zeller notes most of the team’s war photographs were stereoscopic 3D images.