Their long rivalry climaxed with the spilled blood of an American president. Mathew Brady, nearly blind and hoping to rekindle his artistic photographic magic, competed against his former understudy, Alexander Gardner, to record the epic moments of President Abraham Lincoln’s death; the hunt for his murderer, John Wilkes Booth; and the execution of the men and women who conspired with Booth to cripple the United States government. The two photographers rushed to the theater where Lincoln was slain, to the gallows where the conspirators were hanged, and to the autopsy table where Booth was identified, hoping to capture the iconic images of their times … and to emerge as the nation’s unrivaled master of the new media.

Shooting Lincoln tells the heart-pounding story of their race for lasting camera-lens glory-and shows how, at the end of the Civil War, photography had become the photojournalism that would our change culture forever. Brady and Gardner took some of the most memorable images ever recorded in history, invented a new media industry, and became the fathers of modern media, unlocking the passion of Americans for close-up views of history as it happened.