Timothy O'Sullivan

Photographing the Civil War and the American West

Sep 14, 2009 Kristin Hanneman

After mastering field photography during the Civil War, Timothy O'Sullivan created starkly beautiful images of the American West.

Born in 1840, shortly after the invention of photography, Timothy O’Sullivan began his career as an apprentice in Matthew Brady’s Manhattan studio in the 1850s. Brady specialized in portrait photography. Although photography had been used to record earlier wars -- notably the Mexican War and the Crimean War -- Brady realized the outbreak of the war between the states was an opportunity to document armed conflict in greater detail than previously possible. He dispatched photographers including O’Sullivan and Alexander Gardner to cover battles in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Recording the Civil War

Gardner and O’Sullivan soon broke away from Brady, primarily to gain recognition for their own work. Close to half the images in the landmark 1866 book Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War are credited to O’Sullivan. The book includes one of O’Sullivan’s most famous images, “The Harvest of Death,” taken at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. The shocking view of Union corpses has become an enduring image of the war.

O’Sullivan’s Civil War photographs include a range of subjects: troops building a pontoon bridge, engineers on telegraph poles, soldiers in camp, portraits of slave families and the harsh realities of death on the battlefield. He composed his images from interesting angles, looking up at the horizon or down from an elevated position. He took a notable sequence of pictures of Gen. U. S. Grant’s council of war at Massaponax Church, Virginia from the second story of the church.

O’Sullivan became known for his technical proficiency in the arduous wet collodion photographic process that involved coating glass plates with emulsion, exposing them in the camera and then immediately affixing the negatives in a chemical bath in a traveling darkroom.

Documenting the West

Following the war, O’Sullivan traveled west with two major expeditions. In 1867, he joined Clarence King on the U. S. Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel. In 1871 he accompanied Lt. George M. Wheeler's Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian. While exploring California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, O’Sullivan photographed vast landscapes, underground mines, prehistoric ruins, and the daily life of Apaches, Navajos and Zunis. His images of Native Americans are straightforward and unsentimental; his landscapes depict man’s insignificance in the face of nature’s brute force. O’Sullivan’s artistic, often abstract compositions reveal the modernity of his approach.

Upon returning from the west in 1874, O’Sullivan printed negatives of his expedition photographs and later worked as photographer for the U. S. Geological Survey and as chief photographer for the Treasury Department. Tragically, O’Sullivan’s life was cut short – he contracted tuberculosis and died in 1882 at the age of 42. In spite of his abbreviated career, he ranks as one of the most important American photographers of the 19th Century, leaving behind a collection of stunning images that have inspired succeeding generations.

The copyright of the article Timothy O'Sullivan in Photography is owned by Kristin Hanneman. Permission to republish Timothy O'Sullivan in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.