MATHEW BRADY AND

DAVID MUENCH
Jaylen Weems
March 6 , 2018
▪ Early life- Brady was born on May 18, 1822, in Warren County, New York, near Lake
George, the youngest of three children of Irish immigrant parents, Andrew and
Samantha Julia Brady. He himself originally said that he was born in Ireland.
▪ Career- At age 16, Brady moved to Saratoga, New York, where he met portrait painter
William Page, and became Page's student. In 1844, Brady opened his own photography
studio in New York, and by 1845, he began to exhibit his portraits of famous Americans,
including the likes of Senator Daniel Webster and poet Edgar Allan Poe.
▪ Later years and death- During the war, Brady spent over $100,000 to create over 10,000
plates. He expected the US government to buy the photographs when the war ended.
When the government refused to do so he was forced to sell his New York City studio
and go into bankruptcy. Congress granted Brady $25,000 in 1875, but he remained
deeply in debt.Depressed by his financial situation and loss of eyesight, and devastated
by the death of his wife in 1887, he died penniless in the charity ward of Presbyterian
Hospital in New York City on January 15, 1896, from complications following a streetcar
accident.
▪ Here in this photo taken of
some soldiers in the civil war
you can see he has the aspect
of the value element showing
a middle gray tint.
▪ Here is another example of
value with a gray tone. And a
little bit of balance in the
asymmetrical aspect of it.
▪ Here is some more value and gray
tone but also movement as he
captured a picture of soldiers in
battle during the civil war.
▪ This picture is a self-portrait of Brady with
color which came much later towards the
downfall his career.
▪ Muench was born on June 25, 1936 in Santa Barbara,
California. A freelance photographer since the 1950s, his
formal schooling includes the Rochester Institute of
Technology, Rochester, New York, The University of
California at Santa Barbara and the Art Center School of
Design, Los Angeles. In 1975, Muench was commissioned
by the National Park Service to photograph 33 large
murals on the Lewis and Clark Expedition for the
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis,
Missouri, including 350 smaller photographs to
accompany the murals. His son, Marc Muench, is a
successful photographer in his own right, specializing in
landscape and outdoor action photography. His daughter,
Zandria, is a freelance photographer, specializing in
animals, nature, and landscape. In 1997, the Muench
family received NANPA's Lifetime Achievement in Nature
Photography Award.
▪ Vast areas of color

▪ Rhythm is expressed through the

similar colors of rocks and
vegetation
▪ Contrast in between the rocks with
the light color farther down the
picture and a darker color where the
sun doesn’t reach.
▪ Proximity in the spaced out trees

▪ Orange hue of the sun peaking through the

trees
▪ A sense of symmetry in the trees

▪ Warm feeling of the sun reflecting off

the cold snow.
DAGUERREOTYPE
▪ The Daguerreotype process, or daguerreotype, was the first publicly
available photographic process, and for nearly twenty years it was the one most
commonly used.
▪ Invented by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and introduced worldwide in
1839,daguerreotype was almost completely superseded by 1860 with new, less
expensive processes yielding more readily viewable images. During the past few
decades, there has been a small revival of daguerreotype among photographers
interested in making artistic use of early photographic processes. To make the
image, a daguerreotypist would polish a sheet of silver-plated copper to a mirror
finish, treat it with fumes that made its surface light sensitive, expose it in
a camera for as long as was judged to be necessary, which could be as little as a
few seconds for brightly sunlit subjects or much longer with less intense lighting;
make the resulting latent image on it visible by fuming it with mercury vapor;
remove its sensitivity to light by liquid chemical treatment, rinse and dry it, then
seal the easily marred result behind glass in a protective enclosure.