Timothy H. O'Sullivan

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O'Sullivan around 1871/74

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (* around 1840 probably in Ireland ; † January 14, 1882 in Staten Island ) was an American photographer who achieved fame mainly for his works that documented the Civil War and his landscape photographs taken during expeditions.

Early years

Timothy H. O'Sullivan was probably born in Ireland in 1840 to Jeremiah and Ann O'Sullivan. His family then moved to the United States of America because of the Great Famine in their home country . Otherwise, little information is known about O'Sullivan's education and upbringing. What is certain, however, is that he began training at Mathew B. Brady's photo gallery in New York City in 1856 or 1857 , where he learned the process of the daguerreotype . Shortly thereafter, he was transferred to a branch of Brady's Washington, DC company , which was run by Alexander Gardner .

Civil War

O'Sullivan's most famous photo, The Harvest of Death , 1863

The in-depth training that he enjoyed with the two photographers prompted O'Sullivan to go into the field with them as a photographer after the outbreak of the Civil War to document the battles. After a first return home from the front lines, Gardner and O'Sullivan, on one side, and Brady, on the other, went their separate ways. The latter was accused of not paying tribute to his photographers by stating that he was the sole author of all images. As the war progressed, O'Sullivan successfully transferred the complicated collodion process to the battlefield and so he eventually became one of the most outstanding war chronists. He documented many historically significant battles, such as the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862 or the Battle of Appomattox in 1865 . Became famous after the war, especially the picture The Harvest of Death (in German: The Harvest of Death ) from 1863, for O'Sullivan the corpses on the battlefield of Gettysburg had photographed. Of the four hundred war photographers officially named by the Union Army alone, only a few stood out after the war. Both O'Sullivan and Gardner did this. In the volume published by the latter, Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War (1866), 44 of the 100 pictures contained were taken by O'Sullivan.

Expedition photographer

First, O'Sullivan returned to Washington DC after the war, where he was hired by the geologist Clarence King due to his achievements in the war to be part of the important expedition along the 40th parallel. This work, financed by the War Department , was supposed to open up the area between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada for railroad construction and at the same time document mineral resources and Indian tribes. So many pictures were taken between 1867 and 1869, including America's first underground picture, which O'Sullivan made in Virginia City , Nevada in the winter of 1867/1868 . Back in Washington DC, he met his future wife, Laura Virginia Pywell .

Miners in Nevada, 1871
Stereoscopic photo of a Diné (Navajo) warrior and his mother, 1873

After he had only partially successful photographs for the United States Navy in Panama in 1870 due to the tropical weather conditions , O'Sullivan was a member of the expedition in eastern Nevada and Arizona led by the pioneer and cartographer George Montague Wheeler in 1871 . Again, accurate topographical data should be collected and possible natural resources should be looked for in the area. On the return trip from this tough expedition, in which O'Sullivan's boat sank in the Colorado River and he had crossed Death Valley at times without his guide and without water , many of the glass plate negatives were broken. The remaining pictures, however, were among the most impressive depictions of nature. A year later, O'Sullivan took photos again under Clarence King in Wyoming , Colorado and Utah . On February 11, 1873, he married Laura Virginia Pywell in Washington DC. In the same year he joined a second expedition under Wheeler, but this time led some subgroups himself. In this way he not only succeeded in taking his famous landscape photographs in the region of the Canyon de Chelly , but was also able to successfully capture the life of the Indians, especially that of the Diné, in pictures. The last pictures of the west were taken in Idaho in 1874 . Here O'Sullivan photographed the Shoshone Falls - 70 meters of water from the Snake River plunging into the depths .

Sickness and death

He spent most of the winter months in Washington DC, where he and his wife lost their son to stillbirth in September 1876 . During this time, O'Sullivan only earned his living selling prints of the pictures he had taken during the expeditions without taking any further active photographs. He only worked for a short time in 1879 for the newly established United States Geological Survey , of which King was director. When the position of the Treasury Department photographer was finally vacant, he applied. To this end, he received letters of recommendation from his former superiors Brady, Gardner and King and was hired. But both he and his wife had contracted tuberculosis and after only five months O'Sullivan had to stop working. His wife died in 1881 with her family and he too succumbed to the consequences of his illness on January 14, 1882.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On his death certificate, Ireland was given by his father as the place of birth, although Timothy O'Sullivan himself said in an application in 1880 that Staten Island was his place of birth. However, since his parents did not live in Staten Island in 1840, it is believed that he hoped for better chances at the interview by pretending to be a native of the United States. Ireland is therefore much more likely to be the place of birth. In addition, it is not listed in the baptismal register of St. Peter's Church in Staten Island, even though it was built in 1839.
  2. ^ A b Margaret Regan: The life of Timothy H. O'Sullivan , in: Tucson Weekly, March 13, 2003
  3. ↑ Alexander Gardner: Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War , 1959, Dover Publications, ISBN 978-0-486-22731-3

literature

  • James D. Horan: Timothy O'Sullivan, America's Forgotten Photographer , 1966, Bonanza
  • Joel Snyder: American Frontiers: The Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan, 1867-1874 , 1981, Aperture, ISBN 978-0-89381-083-2

Web links

Commons : Timothy H. O'Sullivan  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME O'Sullivan, Timothy H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Ireland
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 1882
Place of death Staten Island