In
1867 photographer Timothy O’Sullivan (1840-1882) accompanied Clarence
King, Geologist-in-Charge, on the Geological Explorations of the Fortieth
Parallel expedition, sponsored by the U.S. government. O’Sullivan, who
had started as a teenaged apprentice in the New York studios of Matthew Brady,
had rapidly progressed to positions of responsibility and between 1861 and
1865 took many of the most striking and best-known photographs of the Civil
War. King, a connoisseur of art as well as a geologist and mountaineer, included
photography as part of his exploration and description of the American west
for artistic as well as scientific purposes.
The expedition,
which eventually stretched to three seasons (spring to autumn, in 1867, 1868,
and 1869), included 17 civilians, pack animals, a cavalry guard, and a portable
darkroom for processing glass plate collodion negatives in the field. Clouds
of mosquitoes and debilitating malaria plagued the expedition, and snow-covered,
ice-encrusted mountain passes and rampant rivers hampered progress. The travails
of O’Sullivan, who succeeded in recording incomparable photographs under
horrendous conditions, have become legendary. Wet plates had to be sensitized
on the spot, slid into the camera while wet, and developed and fixed within
minutes. A century later Ansel Adams remarked that, despite these difficulties,
“no modern photographs I have seen so successfully convey the mood of
such noble scenes.”
Albumen
prints, such as the one reproduced here, depicting Echo Canyon, Utah, were
made in a photographic laboratory in Washington, D.C., after the conclusion
of the expedition and were published in portfolio editions. For this image
O’Sullivan has chosen an angle that illustrates the vertiginous grandeur
of western rock formations in addition to providing information about stratigraphy
and geological composition.
King’s
survey encompassed a band extending about one hundred miles north of the 40th
parallel from the western border of Nevada to Denver and the eastern foothills
of the Rocky Mountains, skirting the proposed route of the Central Pacific
Railroad (already under construction). Surveyors triangulated prominent natural
features while O’Sullivan exposed plates. The expressed purpose of the
expedition was to ascertain physical characteristics of the region, including
mineral resources, flora, fauna, and agricultural potential. Another purpose
may have been to identify and map possible strongholds from which Native Americans
could mount resistance against the soon-to-come incursion of miners, soldiers,
ranchers, farmers, and other white settlers. Such surveys and photographs
were ultimately a tool of the policy of westward expansion known as Manifest
Destiny.
Landscape
photographs made by Timothy O’Sullivan and William Bell during expeditions
to the American frontier in the nineteenth century are available for research
in the Institute Archives and Special Collections, 14N-118.
Object of the Month: February 2004
