"A personal exploration of the history of the American West through the work of the nineteenth-century photographer Timothy O'Sullivan"--
This examination of the work of Timothy OSullivan, Americas most famous war photographer, details his work after the Civil War capturing the landscapes of the American West while traveling with surveyors Clarence King and George Wheeler. 30,000 first printing. Illustrations.
"Extraordinary . . . A transformative experience for the reader." Lucy Sante
"A large-hearted, wide-angled book . . . I couldn't put it down." Ian Frazier
A personal exploration of the American West and the work of one of Americas greatest photographers.
Timothy OSullivan is Americas most famous war photographer. You know his work even if you dont know his name: A Harvest of Death, taken at Gettysburg, is an icon of the Civil War. He was also among the first photographers to elevate what was then a trade to the status of fine art. The images of the American West he made after the war, while traveling with the surveys led by Clarence King and George Wheeler, display a prescient awareness of what photography would become; years later, Ansel Adams would declare his work surrealistic and disturbing.
At the same time, we know very little about OSullivan himself. Nor do we knowreally knowmuch more about the landscapes he captured. Robert Sullivans Double Exposure sets off in pursuit of these two enigmas. This book documents the authors own road trip across the West in search of the places, many long forgotten or paved over, that OSullivan pictured. It also stages a reckoning with how the changes wrought on the land were already under way in the 1860s and '70s, and how these changes were a continuation of the Civil War by other means. Sullivan, known for his probing investigations of place in the pages of The New Yorker and books like Rats and My American Revolution, has produced a work that, like OSullivans magisterial photos of geysers and hot springs, exposes a fissure in the American landscape itself.
