.
West half of Larger Soda Lake near Ragtown, Nevada
Shoshone Falls (212-foot drop) on the Snake River in Idaho
East Humboldt Mountains in Nevada. Quartzites at the head of Glacial Canyon
Glacial lake in the summit region of the Uinta Mountains of Utah
Uinta Mountain summits. Mount Agassiz and Lake Agassiz in Uinta quartzites
T. H. O'Sullivan's mules near the edge of the mouth of a geyser in the Pahute Mountains of Nevada
Summer snow bank in the East Humboldt Mountains of Nevada
Lassen Peak, overlooking "Chaos" in California
Mud volcano on Lassen Peak in California
Tertiary bluffs (Green River Eocene) near Green River City, Wyoming Territory
Green River Canyons: Upper Canyon, Great Bend, Uinta Mountains, Horseshoe Bend, and Green River below the bend, viewed from Flaming Gorge Ridge
Summits of the Humboldt Mountains, East Humboldt Mountains, Lake Marion in eastern Nevada
Hot Springs, Nevada
Hot Springs, Nevada
Sierra Nevada Mountains, viewed from Mono Lake in Bloody Canyon in California
Mono Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Obsidian Crater in the foreground
Two members of King's expedition on one of the mounds in Pyramid Lake in Nevada
Near Steamboat Springs in Washoe Valley, Nevada
Sand dunes on the east of side of the Truckee Desert in Nevada
Tom - Tremendous images. I'm struck by how much O'Sullivan's photographs seem to reference - consciously or not - compositional tropes of the Sublime in European (and Hudson River school?) landscape painting, particularly in those shots where the scale of the deep background is emphasised by overwhelmed human figures in the foreground (and in their fragile little river-craft, another resonant Romantic/Sublime metaphor). Check out Turner's Eruption of Vesuvius for a good, if extreme example. That Sublime theme of the feebleness of human powers in the face of Nature's
ReplyDeleteindifference and implacable force seems also to have particular pertinence - conscious or not, again - given the political /institutional context of the expeditions, and the goal of measurement, mapping, containment and profitable domestication of the 'wild'.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteSuch amazing photos, that black and white, that great expanse of grey scale from foreground to background way back then -- and still t/here. . . .
8.21
light coming into fog against invisible
ridge, English sparrow landing on fence
in foreground, sound of wave in channel
described as “one that must
have been,” recognize
in thinking, as thinking is
to be thought, itself
grey white of fog against top of ridge,
3 cormorants flapping across toward it
that black and white, that great expanse of grey scale from foreground to background
ReplyDeletelight coming into fog against invisible
__
Indeed, Steve, indeed. Gray world altogether here this morning, foreground, middleground, background, all one uncontrasting mass. And a single bird call breaking the silence between isolated non-rush-hour-day cars.
__
Barry, wonderful of you to raise the very salient issue of this photographer's relation (if any) with the larger artistic workings of his time. That issue of O'Sullivan's resemblance to/kinship with 19th c. landscape painting, and the concept of the Sublime resonant therein, has come up here also.
One might imagine not only Turner but Caspar David Friedrich, for example, as correspondents, at least in spirit.
But almost certainly any relation would be accidental. The conceptual basis of the Romantic Sublime would have been well outside O'Sullivan's frame of reference.
If he had any education at all, as an impoverished Irish immigrant lad in the 1840s/1850s, it was probably in charity and parish schools, at the hands of nuns whose reference one would have to suppose was strictly parochial, in both senses.
He was fifteen or sixteen when he apprenticed to Mathew Brady, and it was in Brady's photographic studio that his technical training as an artist occurred. And the rapid development of his skills was owed not to museum visits (one doubts he ever made any) but to the battlefield.
Otherwise, from what we can make out, most of his worldly wisdom was probably gained with one foot on a bar room brass rail.
The more I look, the more I sense a uniqueness in O'Sullivan's vision, an emotional distance enhanced if not inspired by the enormities of the solitudes in which he did his work.
Remembering that the Alps, the classic trying-grounds of the Sublime, had been a great artistic studio going way back -- there is an astonishing letter of Petrarch's that begins with just such a long view.
Whereas these places O'Sullivan documents had in many cases not been visited by white men; and in any event might well have presented, to any classically trained painter, a menacing and foreboding rather than a romantically or dramatically elevating prospect.
Words like raw, stark, desolate and bleak mumble from the back of the mind. Where others might have seen something terrifying -- or seen nothing at all (the top photo here, unsurpassed!) -- O'Sullivan seems to have been looking most receptively, and intensely.
But perhaps it's only a step beyond the Romantic Sublime to the Remote and Inhuman.
At any rate, given the period, one is almost tempted to suspect it was a lack of familarity with the artistic currents of the time that made O'Sullivan's work possible. The bare, minimalist approach and atmosphere of lonesome apartness in these photos seem in some impalpable way to make them jump right out of the spirit of their century and into what ours might feel like, had we artists so audacious as to move beyond cliché and irony and fuss, and truly represent it.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteYes, "The bare, minimalist approach and atmosphere of lonesome apartness here -- great western expanse not seen by white man before this, such 'raw power' in these views of such places. . . and what you said about O'S's background / foreground in relation to Bursynsky's the other day. . . .
8.22
grey whiteness of fog against invisible
top of ridge, blue jay calling in right
foreground, no sound of wave in channel
before one in that position
that, in which stands
sometimes, what the picture
should be, is what is
grey white of fog against top of ridge,
wingspan of pelican flapping toward it
Tom - You stir up some interesting questions of interpretation (which is another way of saying yeah, you're absolutely right, but that's not going to stop me blathering on ...) - how much are the work's meanings held in check (or maybe preserved) by the contingencies and potentialities of its 'own' historical moment, or how much is it always a work in progress, cut loose from O'Sullivan's knowledge and intention into constant repositionings and new triangulations which make it always the same work and something other than that? (Maybe, again, this decodes as 'like I'm going to let a lack of historical knowledge spoil my fun'). But whatever each of us decides on that, something in these images compels engagement beyond just 'yeah, nice/interesting picture'.
ReplyDeleteBarry, you're right of course; surely what any work "says" is always so much more -- not only more than what the author may have meant, but also more than what each successive generation of viewers may read into it. It speaks to us, now, and in doing that, it continues to change... and live.
ReplyDeleteStill, taking Friedrich again as an example -- because for me his work perhaps comes closest, among the practitioners of the Romantic Sublime, to approximating the expansive, and lonely, vistas of the O'Sullivan landscapes of the West -- it's my sense that his works seek moments of instant sublimity that always seem tinged with a light another world, or perhaps a "light from within".
Whereas that sort of metaphorical reach would seem outside not only the purposes but the actual needs of O'Sullivan, whose work reflects for me (to take Steve's comment as text, or convenience) an immediate
'raw power'
drawn as if from the landforms, as if without mediation... though of course the ardours of setting up the shots, making those large glass plate negatives, and getting them back across the continent to be printed (and surviving it all) certainly did require a series of interventions and mediations almost imponderable to think upon.
But the end result, with O'Sullivan, it seems to me, is a product that goes a long way toward fitting this small formula (again drawn from Stephen's "text" for the day):
sometimes, what the picture
should be, is what is
'Whereas that sort of metaphorical reach would seem outside not only the purposes but the actual needs of O'Sullivan' - Absolutely ... and yet. The linkage you make to Steve's text makes another slight but significant shift in what O'Sullivan's images now mean for me, as well as a new opening into Steve's work, which as a result speaks to me in unanticipated ways about respecting the 'bare' notation of 'what is' while testing its relationship to what it gives rise to in thought and feeling and further imagining. And so we roll on, merrily.
ReplyDeleteTom,
ReplyDeleteGreat 'distinction' you make here between Romantic Sublime's aim to get at (and indeed getting) "moments of instant sublimity" (Friedrich's view in link) and O'S's
"raw power" (sans metaphor), so that --
sometimes, what the picture
should be, is what is
Also, thanks Barry for noting "unanticipated ways about respecting the 'bare' notation of 'what is' while testing its relationship to what it gives rise to in thought and feeling and further imagining.". . . .
Many thanks to Barry and Steve for the generosity of attention and thought brought to bear on these issues: similarities and differences in the approach of European and American artists to the grand subject matter posed by wild nature. Thinking along with you both has helped clarify things a bit for me.
ReplyDeleteKeeping in mind all along the "bigger picture", quite literally... the unwelcoming and uncivilized vastness of the West certainly did propose a new challenge. The old means were not sufficient unto the new occasion, and it was perhaps advantageous to be having to start all over. Certainly the very large-scale landscape images, first created by Carleton E. Watkins, and soon thereafter by O'Sullivan and W.H. Jackson, were only made possible by new technical means. (I don't think any of these photographers was much influenced by the Hudson River School, though there was indeed some awareness 'tother way round -- at least one notable painter, Bierstadt, was significantly influenced by his first viewing of the Western landscape work of Watkins.) The use by Watkins of a "mammoth camera", specially built by a cabinet maker to make 22" x 18" glass-plate negatives -- and similar instrumentation then employed, along with stereoscopic techniques, by O'Sullivan and Jackson -- enabled the capture of spaces larger, and less inviting, than anything European art had yet confronted. In response to radically new experiences of vast, strange, previously unexplored landforms, the three great 19th century photographers of the West literally changed the art form to allow a registration of the geology.
Tom/Steve - I've enjoyed (and learnt from) this exchange a great deal. But seeing the latest 'After Chaos' images, I can only fall back from all subtleties and sophistications into a dumb-struck 'Wow, what a country'.
ReplyDeleteIn reference to the picture titled "Near Steamboat Springs in Washoe Valley, Nevada" I have taken a current picture from the exact same spot as the original photographer. It is a very interesting comparason and I could post it here but I am not sure how.
ReplyDeleteAnyway thanks for the wonderful pictures.