Group of Pah-Ute Indians
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1986
Accession Number
1986.1054.12
Art Historical Context
**Group of Pah-Ute**, captured by Timothy H. O'S in 1871, offers a poignant glimpse into Native American life during the era of westward expansion. O'Sullivan, a pioneering photographer renowned for his work with the U.S. Geological—first under Clarence King and later Ferdinand Hayden—traveled through the American West, documenting its landscapes and peoples. This image, made during the Wheeler Survey in southern Utah or Nevada, portrays a group of Pah-Ute (Paiute) individuals, reflecting the cultural encounters between survey teams and Indigenous communities amid rapid territorial changes. P...
About the Artist
Timothy H. O'Sullivan · 1840–present
Timothy H. O'Sullivan (c. 1840–1882) was a pioneering American photographer whose unflinching lens captured the raw devastation of the Civil War and the sublime vastness of the untamed West. Born in New York City—or possibly Ireland, with his family migrating soon after—his early life remains sparsely documented. As a teenager, he apprenticed under Mathew Brady at the famed daguerreotype studio on...