Spanning the archive and the museum : Timothy O'Sullivan's King Survey photographs

Originally created as documents of the government surveys in the 1860s-1870s, Timothy O'Sullivan's photographs were rediscovered in the mid-twentieth century by museum curators, artists and scholars, many of whom argued for O'Sullivan's artistic genius, uniqueness and his proto-modernist compositions. His early champions were the artist Ansel Adams and curator Beaumont Newhall, but others argued for the aesthetic importance of his work at the end of the century, including scholars Joel Snyder, Robin Kelsey, and Museum of Modern Art curator Peter Galassi. In the early 1980s, Rosalind Krauss argued against the notion that O'Sullivan should be included in the photographic art canon in her 1982 article, "Photography's Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View" in Art Journal. This thesis focuses on the changing reception and the functions of O'Sullivan's photographs by an examination of different examples of one photograph, O'Sullivan's "Sioux Hot Springs", held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, New York), the National Archives Still Picture Unit (College Park, Maryland), and the George Eastman House (Rochester, New York).

Spanning the archive and the museum : Timothy O'Sullivan's King Survey photographs

Originally created as documents of the government surveys in the 1860s-1870s, Timothy O'Sullivan's photographs were rediscovered in the mid-twentieth century by museum curators, artists and scholars, many of whom argued for O'Sullivan's artistic genius, uniqueness and his proto-modernist compositions. His early champions were the artist Ansel Adams and curator Beaumont Newhall, but others argued for the aesthetic importance of his work at the end of the century, including scholars Joel Snyder, Robin Kelsey, and Museum of Modern Art curator Peter Galassi. In the early 1980s, Rosalind Krauss argued against the notion that O'Sullivan should be included in the photographic art canon in her 1982 article, "Photography's Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View" in Art Journal. This thesis focuses on the changing reception and the functions of O'Sullivan's photographs by an examination of different examples of one photograph, O'Sullivan's "Sioux Hot Springs", held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, New York), the National Archives Still Picture Unit (College Park, Maryland), and the George Eastman House (Rochester, New York).

This is the American Earth: An exhibition and book by Ansel Adams, Nancy Newhall, and the Sierra Club

During a remarkable period of growth for the Sierra Club during the Cold War, the club sponsored This Is the American Earth in 1954, a collaborative project between Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall that resulted in a 1955 exhibition of photographs and a 1960 photobook on the theme of nature conservation. The two productions of photography provide a crucial opportunity to examine how the medium was employed as a campaign tool and an instrument of propaganda over a period of six years. Yet, the project has been almost exclusively defined by its 1960 book. This thesis aims to recuperate the message and import of the 1955 exhibition to determine the function of the entire project, significantly revealing that in addition to being a social and political device, This Is the American Earth marked a critical point in Adams’s and Newhall’s ongoing battle for photography’s recognition as a fine art.

This is the American Earth: An exhibition and book by Ansel Adams, Nancy Newhall, and the Sierra Club

During a remarkable period of growth for the Sierra Club during the Cold War, the club sponsored This Is the American Earth in 1954, a collaborative project between Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall that resulted in a 1955 exhibition of photographs and a 1960 photobook on the theme of nature conservation. The two productions of photography provide a crucial opportunity to examine how the medium was employed as a campaign tool and an instrument of propaganda over a period of six years. Yet, the project has been almost exclusively defined by its 1960 book. This thesis aims to recuperate the message and import of the 1955 exhibition to determine the function of the entire project, significantly revealing that in addition to being a social and political device, This Is the American Earth marked a critical point in Adams’s and Newhall’s ongoing battle for photography’s recognition as a fine art.

Framing the Postmodern Waste Land

The “Postmodern Waste Land” explores the way mining operations and other industrial processes have affected the Earth’s surface, leaving scarred mountainsides, polluted rivers, and residual poisons that will remain in the earth for centuries. Superfund sites are the subject of David T. Hanson’s photographic surveys, while Edward Burtynsky has dramatized the way the wilderness has been destroyed through oil drilling and mining. The earlier history of ecological photography is covered as well, through a discussion of the opposing strategies of mid-twentieth century environmental photography—on one hand, the representation of the exploited landscape, and on the other hand the celebration of the natural world, as in photographs of Ansel Adams.