Timothy O’Sullivan: Exploring the West Part Three The leader of the survey party in charge of the United States Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel (1867-79) was Clarence King, one of the “characters” of the West during its days of being...
Timothy O’Sullivan: Exploring the West Part Two For decades the work of the nineteenth century photographer, Timothy O’Sullivan had been relegated to government archives and he was remembered, it at all, as one of the “operatives” of Matthew...
Timothy O’Sullivan: Exploring the West Part One In retrospect, it is something of an oddity that twenty-one year old Timothy O’Sullivan was not drafted into the ranks of the Union Army for the American Civil War. After all many young Irishmen, fresh to the...
Alexander Gardner: The Last of the Native Americans After the Louisiana Purchase, the new maps designated the vast stretch of land west of the 100th meridian as “the Great American Desert.” To the eighteenth century mind, this territory, dry and dusty,...
Alexander Gardner: The Last of the West Once it was customary, in less sensitive times, to refer proudly to “winning the West,” a triumphalist trumpeting of conquest and colonialism in which “we,” the authors of history, white people, pushed...
Alexander Gardner and the Civil War Referring of his work as a photographer of the American Civil War, Alexander Gardner said, “It is designed to speak for itself. As mementos of the fearful struggle through which the country has just passed, it is confidently hoped...
