Article
Newsletter: Summer 2004
Timothy H. O'Sullivan and William Bell [produced albumen prints for a work] entitled "Photographs Showing Landscapes, Geological and Other Features, of Portions of the Western Territory of the United States, Obtained in Connection with Geographical and Geological Surveys West of the 100th Meridian." Known as a Wheeler Survey Album, after Lieutenant George M. Wheeler of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the commanding officer of the expeditions, the photographs were taken between 1871 and 1873 and represent a landmark in the develop ment of American art.
When Timothy H. O'Sullivan (1840-1882) was selected by Wheeler to accompany the expedition in 1871, he was probably the most accomplished field photographer in the United States, having worked for both Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner during the Civil War, and later for Clarence King's Survey of the Fortieth Parallel. O'Sullivan's eight-image sequence of the journey through the Black Canyon of the Colorado River is a statement of place that has defined contemporary understanding of the Western landscape with a force rarely equaled.
William Bell (1830-1910) was a portrait photographer whose experience in landscape photography was limited to a single season in the West, making his accomplishment all the more remarkable. His photographs of the Grand Canyon, made during Wheeler's expedition in 1872, have become icons of nineteenth century American photography.
Wheeler recognized the importance of publishing the photographs in conjunction with the more formal survey reports, and the albums served a variety of purposes, including publicity to assist in securing Congressional funding, documentary sup port for the survey's scientific reports, and the encouragement of western expansion and settlement. Most importantly, however, it is evident from their careful sequencing that the photographs were valued primarily as a pictorial narrative of the discovery of the West, a point that is often obscured when they are removed from their original context. The Wheeler Survey Albums illustrate two simultaneous explorations, the physical terrain between the Missouri River and the Pacific Coast, and the art of picturing the new territory with the camera. As O'Sullivan and Bell traveled west, just three decades after the invention of photography, they encountered a spare and unfamiliar landscape. It is in the work of these artists that we find one of the earliest manifestations of a distinctly American photographic style.
When Timothy H. O'Sullivan (1840-1882) was selected by Wheeler to accompany the expedition in 1871, he was probably the most accomplished field photographer in the United States, having worked for both Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner during the Civil War, and later for Clarence King's Survey of the Fortieth Parallel. O'Sullivan's eight-image sequence of the journey through the Black Canyon of the Colorado River is a statement of place that has defined contemporary understanding of the Western landscape with a force rarely equaled.
William Bell (1830-1910) was a portrait photographer whose experience in landscape photography was limited to a single season in the West, making his accomplishment all the more remarkable. His photographs of the Grand Canyon, made during Wheeler's expedition in 1872, have become icons of nineteenth century American photography.
Wheeler recognized the importance of publishing the photographs in conjunction with the more formal survey reports, and the albums served a variety of purposes, including publicity to assist in securing Congressional funding, documentary sup port for the survey's scientific reports, and the encouragement of western expansion and settlement. Most importantly, however, it is evident from their careful sequencing that the photographs were valued primarily as a pictorial narrative of the discovery of the West, a point that is often obscured when they are removed from their original context. The Wheeler Survey Albums illustrate two simultaneous explorations, the physical terrain between the Missouri River and the Pacific Coast, and the art of picturing the new territory with the camera. As O'Sullivan and Bell traveled west, just three decades after the invention of photography, they encountered a spare and unfamiliar landscape. It is in the work of these artists that we find one of the earliest manifestations of a distinctly American photographic style.
