1020
team. This fi rst season with Wheeler also included an
exploration of the mining districts in Nevada, and a
period photographing in Northern Arizona. At the end
of the survey season, O’Sullivan returned to Washington
D.C. to print the season’s work.
During the 1872 season, O’Sullivan returned to work
with Clarence King photographing in Nevada, Utah,
Wyoming and Colorado, but by 1873 was back with
Wheeler. The intervening winter allowed O’Sullivan to
print two sets of King survey photographs which were
sent to the 1873 World’s Fair in Vienna, along with other
printing for both the King and Wheeler expeditions. On
11 February 1873, while in Washington D.C., O’Sullivan
married his longtime sweetheart Laura Virginia Pywell.
That year he spent the season in Arizona and New Mex-
ico, making images of the Grand Canyon, and taking
perhaps his most famous survey photograph, an image
of the White House Ruins in Canyon de Chelly. The
Indians settled near Santa Fe and in Arizona also became
a primary subject that season. The winter of 1873–4 was
again spent in Washington D.C. printing for both King
and Wheeler, and in May O’Sullivan began producing
offi cial sets of images from Wheeler’s survey, which
were comprised of both large format and stereographic
views. In July of 1874 O’Sullivan embarked on what
would be his last season of photography in the West.
He began in New Mexico and Colorado photograph-
ing Indians and the countryside for Wheeler, and then
took a solo trip to a site he had photographed many
years before: Shoshone Falls in Idaho. These would be
O’Sullivan’s last photographs in the West.
Once again the winter found O’Sullivan printing
in Washington D.C. but this time that work continued
through the middle of 1876. After that little is known
about O’Sullivan’s work; in 1878 he appears in the
Washington D.C. directory as the partner of another
photographer, William J. Armstrong, but it seems that
venture did not last long. He was on the payroll at the
United States Geological Service under King tempo-
rarily in 1880, and was the photographer to the U.S.
Department of the Treasury from November 1880 to
March of 1881, but retired with tuberculosis of the
lungs. In September of 1881, O’Sullivan returned to
his parents’ home in Staten Island, too ill to take care
of himself. On 18 October 1881, O’Sullivan’s wife died
of tuberculosis in Washington, D.C. and he traveled to
attend her funeral there, returning to Staten Island. On
14 January 1882, Timothy H. O’Sullivan died on Staten
Island, also from tuberculosis, at the age of 42.
Rebecca A. Senf
Biography
Timothy H. O’Sullivan was born in 1840, probably in
Ireland, to Jeremiah and Ann O’Sullivan. His family
emigrated to the United States in 1842. In 1861 and
1862 O’Sullivan photographed the Civil War for Mathew
Brady, but spent the rest of the war working for Alex-
ander Gardner. His war photographs were published in
Photographic Incidents of the War from the Gallery of
Alexander Gardner, Photographer to the Army of the
Potomac and Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the
Wa r, 1865/1866. In 1867 he was appointed to Clarence
King’s Geological Explorations of the Fortieth Parallel
and photographed for King in 1867-1869 and again in
1872 in California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado,
and Idaho. O’Sullivan spent six months of 1870 with
the Darien Expedition, photographing in present-day
Panama, but the wet weather and heavy foliage ham-
pered much successful work. That same year he was
hired by Lieutenant George Wheeler to participate in
his explorations, eventually known as the United States
Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth
Meridian. Between 1871 and 1874, O’Sullivan spent
three seasons photographing for Wheeler in California,
Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico.
During his time with the western surveys, most winters
were spent printing negatives made during the explora-
tion season. 1874 marked his last year photographing in
the West, after which he returned to Washington D.C.,
where he continued to work, including a brief job with
the United States Treasury Department in 1880–1881.
He left the government position just fi ve months after
beginning, due to tuberculosis, from which he died on
14 January 1882, at age 42.
See also: Brady, Mathew; Gardner, Alexander;
Survey Photography; War Photography; Camera
Design: Stereo Cameras; Stereoscopy; and Wet
Collodion Negative.Further Reading
Dingus, Rick, The Photographic Artifacts of Timothy O’Sullivan.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.
Horan, James D., Timothy O’Sullivan: America’s Forgotten Pho-
tographer. Garden City, NY: Bonanza Books, 1966.
Katz, D. Mark, Witness to an Era: The Life and Photographs of
Alexander Gardner. New York: Viking, 1991.
Krauss, Rosalind, “Photography’s Discursive Spaces: Landscape/
View.” Art Journal 42, 4 (Winter 1982): 311–19.
Naef, Weston J., Era Of Exploration: The Rise Of Landscape
Photography In The American West, 1860–1885. Buffalo:
Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Boston: distributed by New York
Graphic Society, 1975.
Newhall, Beaumont and Nancy, T. H. O’Sullivan, Photographer.
Rochester, NY: George Eastman House, in collaboration with
the Amon Carter Museum, 1966.
Novak, Barbara, “Landscape Permuted: From Painting to Pho-
tography,” Artforum 14 (Oct 1975): 40–59.
Sandweiss, Martha, “Undecisive Moments: The Narrative Tradi-
tion in Western Photography.” Photography in Nineteenth-
Century America. Fort Worth, TX: Amon Carter Museum,
1991, 98–129.