Timothy H. O'Sullivan, America's Forgotten Photographer

"Mr O'Sullivan" Library of Congress

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (1840-1882)

In the 1930s, photographer Ansel Adams came to possess an album of forgotten 19^th-century photographs of the West. The album, almost two feet long and bound in brown linen and leather, contained 25 albumen prints of Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada by Timothy O’Sullivan. At the time, O’Sullivan was an unknown quantity, “America’s forgotten photographer”, according to James David Horan. (Horan, 1982) However, with the help of Ansel Adams, a great admirer of the Irish-born survey photographer, O’Sullivan’s photographs would one day be recognized in households across the United States. In 1942, Adams convinced his friend Beaumont Newhall, then director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, to include O’Sullivan’s photographs in an exhibition of images taken from the Civil War and the American West. O’Sullivan, who had worked in both arenas, seemed like the perfect fit. As Keith McElroy, professor of photography at the University of Arizona states, O’Sullivan “was right at the heart of American photography, East and West.” (Regan, 2003) Though he only lived to the age of 42, O'Sullivan's body of work is admired and debated by artists and photographers alike. Some, like Ansel Adams, argue for an artistic interpretation of his images, viewing him as a Modernist. Others, like Joel Snyder, insist that O'Sullivan's work was both "documentary" and "expressive". (Brunet, p98) Rosalind Krauss argues against an "aesthetic" interpretation of O'Sullivan's work, pointing out that the purpose of O'Sullivan's images was to document the geology of the American landscape. (Krauss, 1982) According to Francois Brunet, O'Sullivan has today attained a "monumental critical status, probably unique for a nineteenth-century US photographer." (Brunet, p98) 

Little is known about O’Sullivan’s origins. His father listed Ireland as the place of birth on his son’s death certificate, however O’Sullivan himself declared Staten Island, New York to be his place of birth on a job application to the United States Treasury Department in 1880. (Regan, 2003) At the time, the Irish were still a despised minority in the United States, so O’Sullivan may not have been above lying about his origins to get the job. On the same application, O’Sullivan also stated that he served in the Union Army for six months, however his biographer, Joel Snyder, could find no evidence confirming this claim. (Regan, 2003)Whether O’Sullivan was FBI – foreign born Irish – or CIA – conceived in America – his parents, Jeremiah and Anne, were definitely Irish. They likely fled Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s and settled on Staten Island; however their whereabouts cannot be credibly established before 1860, when the family was listed in the federal census. (Jurovics, p11) Like his birth, little is known about O’Sullivan’s upbringing. He left no diaries or letters, but did write with a fine, clear hand that suggests some education, likely by nuns, as a child. (Regan, 2003)

Legend has it that the photographer Mathew Brady was a neighbor of the O’Sullivan family on Staten Island. By 1856, Timothy O’Sullivan was working in Brady’s velvet-lined portrait studio in New York. O’Sullivan was later shipped down to Washington, DC to work under Alexander Gardner as an “operator” in Brady’s Washington gallery after the outbreak of the Civil War. On one of his first field expeditions to the Battle of Bull Run in 1861, 21-year-old O’Sullivan was nearly killed by a shell from one of the rebel field pieces, which exploded his camera. (Regan, 2003)

Mathew Brady, who McElroy describes as a “dandy who wore doe-skin pants and thick glasses”, didn’t make all of his own photographs. In her exhaustive cultural history of photography, Mary Warren Marien speculates that Brady had extremely poor vision, which prevented him from taking photographs in the field. (Marien, p95) However, Brady had an unfortunate and nasty habit of taking credit for much of the work done by his “operators”. This was likely a significant factor in the end of the partnership between Brady and Andrew Gardner. When Gardner left Brady’s Washington studio in 1862, he took O’Sullivan with him. O’Sullivan would spend much of the war in the field, attached to the Army of the Potomac in Virginia. The first images credited to O’Sullivan were taken in South Carolina and Georgia, however he went on to shoot gripping images of the aftermath of most of the war’s major battles, including the Second Manassas, Gettysburg, and Appomattox. (Jurovics, p13) Two of the most famous images to come out of the Civil War- “Harvest of Death, Gettysburg , July 1, 1863” and “Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter”- are credited to Timothy O’Sullivan. Possibly as a result of his experience with Brady, O'Sullivan would form the habit of marking many of his wet-plate negatives with his initials - "T.H.O'S." (Brunet, p97)

"Harvest of Death, Gettysbury, Pennsylvania" July 1, 1863 Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3c37392/

"Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter" July 1863 Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsca.33066/

After the war, O’Sullivan returned to Washington, but the studio was likely suffocating after so many adventures in the field. He quickly signed on with an expedition for the War Department as part of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, or the King survey, under 25 year old Yale graduate, Clarence King. In May 1867, the survey party sailed to Panama, crossed the jungle by narrow-gauge railroad, and continued on to San Francisco. While there, O’Sullivan bought a leftover war ambulance to serve as his mobile darkroom, and four mules to pull it. (Regan, 2003) Beginning the trek over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in July, the party crossed the Donner Pass at night, with snow still on the ground.

Image of O'Sullivan's mobile darkroom- an abandoned war ambulance- and four mules. Photo taken in Carson Sink in 1867. Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congres http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/the-american-west-150-years-ago/100304/

The purpose of the survey was to study a belt of land that was more than eight hundred miles long and one hundred miles wide, from Nevada to Wyoming. The survey party produced reports on access to natural resources, especially the silver mines in Nevada and coal beds to fuel the railroad. In addition, they were tasked with creating an accurate map of the terrain and proposing the best route to lay railroad tracks for the Transcontinental Railroad. During his time with the survey party, O’Sullivan took thousands of images. In the winter of 1867, he took the first images of underground mining in the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nevada, using the light of an ignited magnesium wire. Temperatures in the mines often topped out at 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and the ignited wire always ran the risk of reacting with flammable gases in the mines. According to Beaumont Newhall, photographing inside the mine shafts was near suicidal. (Newhall, p100)

Image taken from nine hundred feet underground, in the Gould and Curry Mine, part of the Comstock Lode in Nevada. This is one of the first flash-lit photographs. Timothy O'Sullivan/NARA http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/the-american-west-150-years-ago/100304/

The King survey was initially authorized by the Secretary of War for three years, from 1867-1869. Therefore, at the close of the survey season in the fall, much of the survey party’s equipment was auctioned off. O’Sullivan returned to Washington to make prints from his many negatives, but did not stay east long. O’Sullivan next signed on with the Darien Expedition in January 1870, a U.S. Navy survey to Panama to study the route for a proposed canal. O’Sullivan sailed to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama, where he was stationed until July 1870. According to Margaret Regan, Timothy O’Sullivan found himself “out of kilter” in the jungles of Panama. O’Sullivan, who was used to the “clear empty skies” of the American West, struggled to take photographs amid the oppressive heat and humidity obstructing green vegetation of the jungle. (Regan, 2003)

O’Sullivan soon returned to the West, on another survey, this time for Lieutenant George M. Wheeler in 1871. The Wheeler survey took O’Sullivan deep into the Southwest, through Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada. Unlike the King survey, the main purpose of the Wheeler survey was topography and mapping, not geology. The survey produced some 95 maps of the territory below the Fortieth Parallel and west of the One Hundredth Meridian, covering some 360,000 square miles. Wheeler was tasked with surveying routes for moving troops through Arizona and Nevada, establishing the army’s presence against Native Americans and pushing white settlement into the Southwest. O’Sullivan would spend three seasons with Wheeler, in 1871, 1873 and 1874. He photographed in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and the California desert. (Jurovics, p28)

Though Timothy O’Sullivan was by no means the only photographer exploring the American West in the late 19^th century, his images remain distinctive and unique from those of William Henry Jackson, William Bell, A.J. Russell, Carlton Watkins, and others. Unlike the romanticized version of the West often portrayed by William Henry Jackson, O’Sullivan’s images were typically stark, austere and sometimes inhospitable. In his essay for Framing the West, Toby Jurovics argues that Timothy O’Sullivan rarely made the expected photograph. “In frame after frame,” Jurovics states, “he composed his images in a manner that did not reflect the style or conventions of his fellow photographers.” (Jurovics, p10) What is often the most distinctive feature of O’Sullivan’s work is his ability to capture objects against the horizon. O’Sullivan’s most famous images- including “Harvest of Death”, “Shoshone Falls,” “Pyramid and Domes,” and “Twin Buttes”- all portray objects located in the foreground, standing out starkly against a flat horizon. Another distinct aspect of O’Sullivan’s images is his sense of scale. He used the natural landscape available to him in the American West to capture great, sweeping images of untouched land. Rather than using mist or the softer light of the setting sun to make his images more picturesque, O’Sullivan shot his images in the bright light of the noon sun. This threw stark shadows across the landscape. The scale also helped O’Sullivan’s images appear austere rather than romantic. The only image that O'Sullivan shot twice, on two different occasions, was that of Shoshone Falls, on the Snake River in Idaho. This was possibly a favorite location for the well-traveled Irishman.

Crew of O'Sullivan's boat "Picture", at Diamond Creek, ascending the Colorado River on the Wheeler survey, 1871. O'Sullivan is fourth from the left. O'Sullivan was one of the first to photograph Native Americans, seen in this image on the right. Unlike Edward Curtis, O'Sullivan did not romanticize Native Americans - note the Western style of dress. Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congress http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/the-american-west-150-years-ago/100304/

"Pyramid and Domes, Pyramid Lake, Nevada" 1867 Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congress http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/the-american-west-150-years-ago/100304/

"Twin Buttes, Green River City, Wyoming" 1872 Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congress http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/the-american-west-150-years-ago/100304/

"Shoshone Falls, Snake River, Idaho. View across top of falls" 1874. Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congress http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/the-american-west-150-years-ago/100304/ Second image of Shoshone Falls. 

The first image of Shoshone Falls, captured in 1868. Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congress http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/the-american-west-150-years-ago/100304/

Toby Jurovics, one of O’Sullivan’s most recent biographers, makes an argument that the difficulties associated with the photographic process O’Sullivan used have often been overstated. In the 1860s and 1870s, wet-plate collodion negatives and albumen prints were the most popular photographic process, the same process used by O’Sullivan. According to Jurovics, making a negative in the field is often presented as “a Herculean task resulting in a successful outcome seemingly against all odds.” (Jurovics, p16) However, Jurovics argues that the process was really not as difficult as portrayed. O’Sullivan had years of experience working in the field during the Civil War, experience that served him well in the West. In addition, O’Sullivan was given great freedom of movement by the survey parties and plenty of time to set up his equipment and capture his images. Jurovics argues that the wet-plate method, though cumbersome, allowed the photographer to immediately view the resulting image and judge its success. If the image was not satisfactory, the plate could be cleaned and reused. (Jurovics, p17)

However, Margaret Regan tells a much different story. According to Regan, O’Sullivan suffered great hardships during his seven seasons photographing the American West. On his first journey west with the King survey, many in the party contracted malaria while travelling through a mosquito-plagued valley. King himself was struck by lightning on Job’s Peak and was temporarily paralyzed. O’Sullivan nearly drowned in the Tuckee River when his boat got jammed against rocks. A Harper’s Weekly report of the incident stated, “The sharp rocks…had so cut and bruised his body that he was glad to crawl into the brier tangle that fringed the river’s bank.” (Regan, 2003) The Wheeler survey faced perhaps even greater hardships. Lieutenant Wheeler was extremely militaristic and a hard taskmaster. He ordered his survey team on long forced marches, sometimes as long as 80 hours, trekking across Death Valley in high summer. O’Sullivan, abandoned by his guide, went two days without water on that particular march. (Regan, 2003) In addition, Wheeler insisted that the survey team explore the Colorado River by rowing upstream into the Grand Canyon- apparently to outshine his rival, John Wesley Powell. (Regan, 2003) Wheeler’s boat was lost during this particular exercise, along with all of his field notes and much of the party’s food. Unfortunately, due to the arduous forced marches, many of O’Sullivan’s glass plate negative were broken in transit. Only 400 remained by the time he returned to Washington in the fall.

A man sits in a wooden boat at the edge of the Colorado River in Black Canyon, Arizona. Image taken on the Wheeler survey, from camp 8, 1871. Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congress http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/the-american-west-150-years-ago/100304/

A man sits on the shore of the Colorado River in Iceberg Canyon, on the border of Arizona and Nevada. 1871 Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congress http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/the-american-west-150-years-ago/100304/

On February 11, 1873, O’Sullivan married Laura Pywell, the sister of a fellow photographer. He remained with his new bride for only 3 months before departing on another expedition to Arizona with Wheeler. During their short marriage, the two were rarely together for extended periods of time, due to O'Sullivan's constant travel out West. O’Sullivan would return to Colorado and New Mexico with Wheeler in 1874, however he later contracted tuberculosis and died on January 17, 1882. His grieving father laid him to rest in St. Peter’s churchyard, Staten Island, N.Y., in an unmarked grave.

In more recent years, O’Sullivan’s work has seen a revival of interest and speculation. In the late 1970s, the Rephotographic Survey Project revisited many of the sites photographed by O’Sullivan and, using field notes and journals kept during the original surveys, rephotographed many of the same locations. Beginning in 1997, the same team led by Mark Klett and Ellen Manchester, revisited the survey routes for a third time and published many of their images on a website devoted to the process of rephotography and the great survey photographers of the American West, available at http://www.thirdview.org/3v/home/index.html

"Ancient ruins in the Canyon de Chelle, N.M. In a niche 50 feet above present canyon floor." 1873 Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congress http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/the-american-west-150-years-ago/100304/

Works Cited

Brunet, Francois. "Revisiting the enigmas of Timothy O'Sullivan" History of Photography, 31:2 (Summer 2007) p. 97-133

Horan, James David. Timothy O'Sullivan: America's forgotten photographer. New York: Bonanza, 1982.

Jurovics, Toby. Framing the West: The survey photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan. New Haven, Conn.:Yale University Press, 2010.

Klett, Mark. "Third view: A rephotographic survey of the American West." 2004 Available: http://www.thirdview.org/3v/home/index.html

Krauss, Rosalind. "Photography's discursive spaces: Landscape/view." Art Journal, 42:2 (Winter, 1982) p. 311-119

Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A cultural history. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2002

Newhall, Beaumont. The history of photography. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982

Regan, Margaret. "The life of Timothy O'Sullivan" Tuscon Weekly, March 13, 2003. Available: http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/the-life-of-timothy-h-osullivan/Content?oid=1071872

Images Sources

Taylor, Alan. "In focus: The American West, 150 years ago." The Atlantic, May 24, 2012 Available: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/the-american-west-150-years-ago/100304/

Library of Congress. "Prints and Photographs Catalog" Available: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/

Extras

Jurovics, Toby. "The Photography of Timothy O'Sullivan." Youtube video, 4:22, posted by Smithsonian Magazine, March 17, 2010. Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqklwtqzc28