Light and Shadow in Black Cañon, From Mirror Bar
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View on museum website →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
1986.1054.22
Art Historical Context
**Light and Shadow in Blackñon, From Mirror** (1871) captures the dramatic interplay of sunlight and deep shadows along the Colorado River's Black Cañon, viewed from Mirror Bar. Photographed by Timothy H.ullivan during the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' survey expeditions led by Lieutenant George M. Wheeler, this image documents the untamed American West amid post-Civil War exploration and expansion. O'Sullivan, a pioneering documentary photographer who had worked with Mathew Brady during the war, brought a masterful eye to these rugged terrains, emphasizing nature's sublime power. Printed as ...
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...