Viewing the archive: Timothy O'Sullivan's photographs for the Wheeler survey, 1871-74

For example, in Black Canon (Fig. 3), as in Ancient Ruins and Snow Peaks (Figs. 1, 2), the scenery itself has seemingly begun to conform to the graphic demands of survey work. In particular, the manufactured geometries of the boat mingle evocatively with the natural shapes of the surrounding scene: the gunwales echo the curving shoreline, the mast reiterates the vertical limits of the brightly lit river surface, whose rectangular shape appears again in the covered box in the boat, and the triangle of mast, stay, and gunwale, in which the figure is inscribed, offers an emblem for the geometric framing of the survey process as a whole. (92) Whether these intricate coordinations of natural morphology and survey equipment were premeditated, recognized afterward, or only unconsciously assessed is impossible to say. But the delicate ways in which this photograph provided both pictorial pleasures and assurances that a more pragmatic visual order was being secured certainly accommodated the historical circumstances.

We cannot reasonably draw a bright line between the scientific and the promotional in O'Sullivan's practice, but there is reason to believe that promotional concerns played a greater role in informing his work than has generally been assumed. In many instances he may have been performing science, in the sense of making a public display of it, more than seeking to further its objectives.

In particular, his photographs that partook of the visual mode of specimen collection may have mimicked this mode for promotional purposes more than they adopted it to maximize scientific knowledge. The principal evidence giving rise to this suspicion is O'Sullivan's unscientific and scant sampling of specimens from explored regions. Although several photographs of things as specimens appeared in survey publications and exposition displays, they were not part of an extensive photographic taxonomy: O'Sullivan took only a smattering of pictures in which a botanical or geologic subject appeared in this manner. From the point of view of constructing a taxonomic archive, the choice of subjects was arbitrary; one would strive in vain to discern a basis within the natural sciences for the decision to photograph the melon cactus and not the ocotillo, senita, pincushion, or cholla. It is possible, of course, that O'Sullivan was merely trying to make his medium as scientifically useful as possible within the limits of his equipment and supplies. But nowhere in the survey correspondence does Wheeler or O'Sullivan complain about not having sufficient glass plates to complete taxonomic records, and Wheeler seemed perfectly happy to continue to reproduce the same few images of cacti, trees, and rocks. The evidence suggests, in short, that O'Sullivan did not attempt to construct an archive of the species and geomorphological particulars of the West but, rather, a small number of his photographs allowed him to represent the activity of specimen collection as if he had. By offering up photographs as collected specimens, his practice harnessed photography's persuasive realism, reliability, and sense of presence to a survey activity that in fact lay largely outside its scope.