Timothy H. O'Sullivan

Timothy O’Sullivan was an American Photographer known for his work photographing the American Civil War and the Western United States during the post war period. Not long after being born in Ireland in 1840 O’Sullivan and his parents immigrated to New York. As a teenager O’Sullivan was an apprentice at Mathew Brady’s studio in New York before enlisting in the Union army at the start of the Civil war. After his service was completed O’Sullivan re-joined Brady and his team as a photographer helping to document the Civil war. After the war O’Sullivan became the official photographer of Clarence Kings United States Geological Exploration of the 40th parallel. Between 1867 and 1869 he took many images of geological sties and mines all along the 40th parallel. In 1870 he travelled to Panama as part of an expedition to scout a canal route. However it was between 1871 and 1874 that O’Sullivan produced some of his most iconic work while he participated in a series of surveys of the American South West. His images of majestic landscapes and the Native Americans that he met during his travels are some of the most important of that time period and provide us with a uniquely unaltered view of that region and its people in an era when photo-pictorialisim was all the rage.