The Photographs of Mathew Brady (Eng. 12) - Sloane Art Library - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Photographs of Mathew Brady (ENG 12)

Finding Books
Finding Periodicals
E-journals
Basic Reference Sources
Websites
Photographic Art and Technique

Finding books: Keyword searching (k=mathew brady) remember to use the correct spelling, Mathew. Keyword searching may turn up more titles than subject or author searching, but you can quickly weed them out; be sure to take note of key authors for your topic and look for other books, exhibition catalogs, or periodical articles by them.

Finding periodical (magazine/journal) articles: you may search Art Full Text and Art Index Retrospective. You will also find useful information on Brady and photography in the Grove Dictionary of Art Online, which has image links. You might also try indexes such as America: History and Life. You will find all of these resources on the Electronic Indexes and Databases page.

Full-text, searchable E-journals on the Libraries Web page are also an important and growing feature. Look on the drop-down menu under Art or American Studies or History and you'll find many. In addition, large full-text journals collections such as Academic Search Premier, Expanded Academic ASAP, IngentaConnect, JSTOR and Project Muse are accessible on the E-indexes page. Search art databases, history databases, and multidisciplinary databases for a broad array of results. For contemporary accounts during the Civil War period which may mention Brady consult Accessible Archives' Civil War section, which has full-text of Civil War era newspapers. 19th Century Masterfile can also help you locate contemporary material. The AccuNet/AP Photo Archive also includes photographers such as Brady, Gardner, and Barnard or search by personal name or place name.

Basic Reference Sources for Photography include:

Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans. (TR 820.5 .T734 1990 On Reserve at UL) This is essential!

Looking at Photographs: a Guide to Technical Terms (Art Ref. TR9 .B35 1991)
Provides information on techniques, such as albumen prints and daguerreotype, used by 19th century photographers.

Photospeak: a Guide to the ideas, Movements and techniques of Photography 1839 to the Present (Art Ref. TR15 .M63 1998)
Useful A-z guide with an index (see Brady); Includes entries for Documentary Photography and War Photography which will provide a brief overview of those genres, as well as entries for techniques. Useful timeline as well.

Photography: a Cultural History. (Art TR15 .M273 2002)
Look at the section on War Photography.

Photography Encyclopedia (Art Ref. and Davis Reference TR9 .M39 1999)
Includes a short entry on Brady as well as on his assistants Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan and George Barnard. Also genres and techniques.

Photography from 1839 to Today (Art Ref. TR6.U62 R63 1999)
Consult the illustrated entry on the American Civil War (pp. 258-71)

Important Web sites: a number of Brady's images are available online, along with other useful information.

Consult the Smithsonian Photography site which has a section on Brady, and the Library of Congress's sites: "American Memory" and the Prints and Photographs Division.

Comparisons with other photographs of the Civil War can also be made consulting the many photographic histories of the Civil War, including the specific and general:

Mathew Brady and the Image of History. (Art Tr140. B7 P36 1997)
Be sure to consult the online catalog to find other books about Brady.

Francis Trevelyan Miller's The Photographic History of the Civil War. (Davis and UL E468.7 .M64 1957)

There are also many state photographic histories, such as
A Photographic History of North Carolina in the Civil War (Davis, UL, NCC) E524 .M38 1997.
Take note of the subject heading used for this book and adapt to find books on other states:
North Carolina--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Pictorial works.

Learning about Photographic Art and Technique

Eternal Moment: Essays in the Photographic Image. (Art TR 187.J87 1989)

Photography's Antiquarian Avant-Garde: the New Wave in Old Processes. Art TR 642.R493 2002

For other books to guide you do a subject search s=photographic criticism.

The UNC Libraries Photographic Archives includes pictorial Civil War material which might be consulted as comparisons to Brady's work as as well.

The Media Resources center in the Undergraduate Library has Ken Burns' landmark Civil War series (65-V2625), which consists of 9 videocassettes. Burns made great use of Civil War-era still photographs in this work.

For general research on Photography consult the Sloane Art Library's Photography webguide which includes information on Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Indexes, History, Criticism and Technique, and a list of Selected Photography Journals and Websites.

You can also try image searches like ARTstor, CAMIO, and the Google image search engine which provides access to a growing number of images on the web.

For help in writing about art or photography see the handy reserve book, Barnet's Short Guide to Writing about Art (Art Reserve N7476 .B37 2000 ) or check out the Writing center's Guide online