Matthew Brady

Mathew Brady was one of the most prolific photographers of the 19th century – a master of both the studio portrait and field documentation of the Civil War. In his half-century as an icon of American photography, Brady had many crucial roles in the medium’s development— innovator, entrepreneur, role model, collector, and booster of the form’s artistic potential—but his achievement in the actual making of photographs, before, during, and after the war, should not be overlooked. Using his images to establish Brady as the master of his art form, Robert Wilson draws from his new biography, Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation, to reintroduce the photographs of the single most important American in photography’s first decades. Photos by Brady of members of the Seventh Regiment will also be on display.

Robert Wilson is the editor of The American Scholar, a former editor of Preservation, the founding literary editor of Civilization (all three of which won National Magazine Awards during his tenure), a former book editor and columnist for USA Today, and a former editor at The Washington Post Book World. His essays, reviews, and fiction have appeared in numerous publications, including American Short Fiction, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Smithsonian, The Washington Post Magazine, and The Wilson Quarterly and on the op-ed, opinion, and bookreview pages of The Boston Globe, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.