Theater of War
The real story behind Mathew Brady's Civil War photographs.
"Mathew Brady's Portraits: Images as History, Photography as Art"
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Sept. 26, 1997-Jan. 4, 1998
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Jan. 24-April 12, 1998
International Center for Photography, New York City
May 1-July 19, 1998
But for Brady himself, war never quite lost its theatricality. Unlike his cold-eyed assistants, he preferred to visit the battlefield after the corpses had been cleared away. There he would stand, his back turned to us like the contemplative artist figure in a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, and reflect on the glory and folly of mankind. Mathew Brady died in 1896. Elusive till the end, he was scheduled to lecture, two weeks later, on his life and work as a war photographer--with slides and patriotic music--at Carnegie Hall.
The Never-Before-Seen Memoir of a Guantánamo Detainee
How the United States Kept Mohamedou Ould Slahi Silent for 12 Years
Who Said It: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford or Simpsons Mayor Diamond Joe Quimby?
Christopher Benfey is Mellon professor of English at Mount Holyoke. His latest book, A Summer of Hummingbirds, about writers and artists in Gilded Age America, has just been published by the Penguin Press.