Historic Photosof The Old West

by Timothy O’Sullivan

O'Sullivan was a photographer who worked

with the US government as it explored the West in the

1860s and 70s. He is famous for both his Civil War photos

and for his remarkable photos of the Old West.

As a teenager, O’Sullivan worked in the studio of the legendary 19th century photographer Mathew Brady. A veteran of the American Civil War in its first year,

O'Sullivan turned his hand to photographing the horrors of war in during the final three years of the conflict before setting out on his cross-continental expeditions.

"The Harvest of Death“Union dead on the battlefield at Gettysburg, PA, July 5–6, 1863

Considered one of the forerunners to Ansel Adams, O'Sullivan is a hero to other photographers according to the Tucson Weekly:

“Most of the photographers sent to document the West's native

peoples and its geologic formations tried to make this strange

new land accessible, even picturesque. Not O'Sullivan.”

“At a time when

Manifest Destiny

demanded that

Americans conquer the

land, he pictured a

West that was

forbidding and

inhospitable. With an

almost modern

sensibility, he made

humans and their

works insignificant.”

O'Sullivan used a primitive wet plate box camera. It took a lot of time to set upeach picture. He had to coat a glass plate with collodion, a flammable solution,put the glass in a holder and insert it into the camera. After a few secondsexposure, he would rush the plate to his dark room wagon to begin thedevelopment process.

O’Sullivan’s traveling darkroom—taken at Carson Sink, NV

White House,Canyon de Chelly, AZ,

1873.

An Anasazi Pueblo ruin.

The cliff dwellings were built by the

Anasazi approximately 650

years ago

Rock formations in the Washakie Badlands, WY in 1872. (A survey member is seen at right to

give some perspective.)

The mining town of Gold Hill, just south of Virginia City, Nevada, in 1867. The town’s prosperity was preserved by mining a rare silver ore called Comstock Lode.

Cathedral Mesa, Colorado River, Arizona in 1871

A Pah-Ute (Paiute) Indian group, near Cedar, Utah 1872

O’Sullivan accompanied George M. Wheeler’s survey group as, for the first time, they charted the land west of the One Hundredth Meridian

A boat crew at Diamond Creek--part of the Wheeler survey which followed the ascent of the Colorado River through the Black Canyon in 1871.

Photographer Timothy O'Sullivan is fourth from the left.

A man sits on a shore beside the Colorado River in Iceberg Canyon, on the border of Mojave County, Arizona, and Clark County, Nevada in 1871.

The Canyon of Lodore, Colorado, 1872

Two men sit looking at headlands north of the Colorado River Plateau in 1872

A man sits in a wooden boat on the edge of the Colorado River in the Black Canyon, Mojave County, AZ in 1871

The Pyramid and Domes in Pyramid Lake, NV -- 1867

The junction of Green and Yampah Canyons, in Utah, 1872

People in the East saw in O'Sullivan's photographs the legend of the pioneering West--a land of limitless opportunity.

Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, in 1869

Alta City, Little Cottonwood, Utah, in 1873

O'Sullivan's amazing eye allowed him to compose photographs that evoked thevastness of the West that future generations would come to recognize in the workof Ansel Adams and in the films of John Houston.

Inscription Rock in what is now known as El Morro National Monument, New Mexico

Nearly 150 years ago, O'Sullivan came across this Spanish inscription from 1726, carved in the sandstone at Inscription Rock.

It reads:"By this place passed Ensign Don Joseph de Payba Basconzelos, in the year in which he held the Council of the Kingdom at his expense, on

the 18th of February, in the year 1726."

Old Mission Church, Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico pictured in 1873

O'Sullivan was famous for not trying to romanticize the native American plight or way of life in his photographs and instead of asking them to wear tribal dress was happy to photograph

them wearing denim jeans.

O'Sullivan worked without prejudice,

trying to capture the everyday aspects of life

for the indigenous people's of North

America. He did not use a studio to capture

images of native Americans, but instead photographed them in natural surroundings.

Maiman: Mojave Indian guide & interpreter, 1871

Paiute men, women and children pose for a picture.

O'Sullivan photographed the true Native American lifestyles and not the preconceived image that most Easterners had at that time.

O'Sullivan's portraits are noted for their simplicity and truth.

Two Mohave Braves, 1871

Ute Braves, 1874

Life among the Navajo at Fort Defiance, NM in 1873..

O'Sullivan managed to capture the domesticity of a dying people as wave after wave of migration snuffed out their way of life. It is noticeable that there is nothing romantic about the pictures and

one profile of Timothy O'Sullivan described these photos as scenes of “a defeated people trying their best to put back together a life.”

O’Sullivan’s photographs, like this one taken at Oak Grove in the White Mountains of Arizona in 1873, remain to give us unforgettable images of

the real Old West.