Timothy O'Sullivan was a pioneering American photographer in the 1860s-70s who worked for the US government to document the American West. He took realistic, unromanticized photos that depicted the landscapes, indigenous peoples, and mining towns he encountered. Rather than stage photos, O'Sullivan captured everyday life, from Native Americans in traditional and modern dress to settlers in mining towns. His photos gave Eastern audiences a glimpse of the vast, untamed West and helped shape popular conceptions of that time and place.

1. Historic Photos
of The Old West
by Timothy O’Sullivan
O'Sullivan was a
photographer who worked
with the US government as it
explored the West in the
1860s and 70s. He is famous
for both his Civil War photos
and for his remarkable photos
of the Old West.

2. As a teenager, O’Sullivan worked in the studio of the legendary 19th century
photographer Mathew Brady. A veteran of the American Civil War in its first year,
O'Sullivan turned his hand to photographing the horrors of war in during the final three
years of the conflict before setting out on his cross-continental expeditions.
"The Harvest of Death“
Union dead on the battlefield at Gettysburg, PA, July 5–6, 1863

3. Considered one of the forerunners to Ansel Adams, O'Sullivan is a hero
to other photographers according to the Tucson Weekly:
“Most of the photographers sent to document the West's native
peoples and its geologic formations tried to make this strange
new land accessible, even picturesque. Not O'Sullivan.”
“At a time when
Manifest Destiny
demanded that
Americans conquer the
land, he pictured a
West that was
forbidding and
inhospitable. With an
almost modern
sensibility, he made
humans and their
works insignificant.”

4. O’Sullivan’s traveling darkroom—taken at Carson Sink, NV
O'Sullivan used a primitive wet plate box camera. It took a lot of time to set up
each picture. He had to coat a glass plate with collodion, a flammable solution,
put the glass in a holder and insert it into the camera. After a few seconds
exposure, he would rush the plate to his dark room wagon to begin the
development process.

5. White House,
Canyon de
Chelly, AZ,
1873.
An Anasazi Pueblo
ruin.
The cliff dwellings
were built by the
Anasazi
approximately 650
years ago

6. Rock formations in the Washakie Badlands, WY
in 1872. (A survey member is seen at right to
give some perspective.)

7. The mining town of Gold Hill, just south of Virginia City, Nevada, in 1867. The town’s
prosperity was preserved by mining a rare silver ore called Comstock Lode.

8. Cathedral Mesa, Colorado River, Arizona in 1871

9. A Pah-Ute (Paiute) Indian group, near Cedar, Utah 1872
O’Sullivan accompanied George M. Wheeler’s survey group as, for the first time, they
charted the land west of the One Hundredth Meridian

10. A boat crew at Diamond Creek--part of the Wheeler survey which followed the ascent of the
Colorado River through the Black Canyon in 1871.
Photographer Timothy O'Sullivan is fourth from the left.

11. A man sits on a shore beside the Colorado River in Iceberg Canyon, on the border of Mojave
County, Arizona, and Clark County, Nevada in 1871.

12. The Canyon of Lodore, Colorado, 1872

13. Two men sit looking at headlands north of the Colorado River Plateau in 1872

14. A man sits in a wooden boat on the edge of the Colorado River in the Black
Canyon, Mojave County, AZ in 1871

15. The Pyramid and Domes in Pyramid Lake, NV -- 1867

16. The junction of Green and Yampah Canyons, in Utah, 1872

17. Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, in 1869
People in the East saw in O'Sullivan's photographs the legend
of the pioneering West--a land of limitless opportunity.

18. Alta City, Little Cottonwood, Utah, in 1873
O'Sullivan's amazing eye allowed him to compose photographs that evoked the
vastness of the West that future generations would come to recognize in the work
of Ansel Adams and in the films of John Houston.

19. Inscription Rock
in what is now known as El Morro National Monument, New Mexico

20. Nearly 150 years ago, O'Sullivan came across this Spanish inscription
from 1726, carved in the sandstone at Inscription Rock.
It reads:
"By this place passed Ensign Don Joseph de Payba Basconzelos, in the
year in which he held the Council of the Kingdom at his expense, on
the 18th of February, in the year 1726."

21. Old Mission Church, Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico pictured in 1873
O'Sullivan was famous for not trying to romanticize the native American plight or way of life in
his photographs and instead of asking them to wear tribal dress was happy to photograph
them wearing denim jeans.

22. O'Sullivan worked
without prejudice,
trying to capture the
everyday aspects of life
for the indigenous
people's of North
America. He did not use
a studio to capture
images of native
Americans, but instead
photographed them in
natural surroundings.
Maiman: Mojave Indian guide & interpreter, 1871

23. Paiute men, women and children pose for a picture.
O'Sullivan photographed the true Native American lifestyles and not the preconceived
image that most Easterners had at that time.
O'Sullivan's portraits are noted for their simplicity and truth.

24. Two Mohave Braves, 1871

25. Ute Braves, 1874

26. Life among the Navajo at Fort Defiance, NM in 1873..
O'Sullivan managed to capture the domesticity of a dying people as wave after wave of migration
snuffed out their way of life. It is noticeable that there is nothing romantic about the pictures and
one profile of Timothy O'Sullivan described these photos as scenes of
“a defeated people trying their best to put back together a life.”

27. O’Sullivan’s photographs, like this one taken at Oak Grove in the White Mountains
of Arizona in 1873, remain to give us unforgettable images of
the real Old West.