Framing the West: the survey photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan

Abstract

"The image of the untamed AmericanWest persists as one of our country's most enduring cultural myths, and few photographers have captured more compelling images of the frontier than Timothy H. O'Sullivan. Trained under Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner, O'Sullivan accompanied two government surveys of the West in the 1860s and 1870s with geologist Clarence King and Lieutenant George M. Wheeler. Along these journeys, O'Sullivan produced photographs that exhibit a forthright and rigorous style formed in response to the landscapes he encountered. Faced with challenging terrain and lacking previous photographic examples on which to rely, O'Sullivan created a body of work that was without precedent in its visual and emotional complexities." "The first major publication on O'Sullivan in close to thirty years, Framing the West offers a new formal and historical interpretation of O'Sullivan's photographs and assesses his continuing influence on the larger photographic canon. The book features previously unpublished and rarely seen images and serves as a field guide for O'Sullivan's original prints, reproducing them for the first time in sequence with the chronology of their production."--BOOK JACKET.

Contents

Foreword / James H. Billington and Elizabeth Broun -- Introduction / Page Stegner -- Map: Territory of the United States West of the One Hundredth Meridian -- Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan / Toby Jurovics -- Through Magic Lenses: Timothy H. O'Sullivan's Stereographs from the King and Wheeler Surveys / Carol M. Johnson -- "Photographing under Difficulties": Andrew Russell's Photographs for the King Survey / Glenn Willumson -- Chronology: Timothy H. O'Sullivan / William F. Stapp -- Appendixes. Stereographs Issued for the King and Wheeler Surveys.