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Ancient Ruins in the Cañon de Chelle, In a Niche Fifty Feet Above Present Cañon Bed
Creator
Timothy H. O'SullivanAmerican Photographer · 1840–1882
All works by this person →Timothy H. O'Sullivan began his photography career as an apprentice to Mathew Brady, but he left the Brady gallery to photograph American Civil War battlefields on his own. In 1862 or 1863, he joined the studio of Alexander Gardner, who included forty-four of O'Sullivan's photographs in *Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War*, the first published collection of Civil War photographs. O'Sull
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1873
- Medium
- Albumen silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- 0074a85a-568e-40d8-978e-7c7efde760bb
In 1873 Timothy O'Sullivan led a splinter group from Lieutenant George Wheeler's geological expedition to Zuni Pueblo in northeast Arizona and to the pre-Columbian cliff dwellings known as the White House Ruins at Cañon de Chelle, mostly dating from the eleventh century. O'Sullivan was one of the first people to photograph the structures nestled in the canyon wall. Above the architectural forms, the monumental striated rock formation hovers illogically where the sky should be. O'Sullivan, photographing from a great distance, conveyed the sense of overwhelming scale. Along with the two tiny figures standing at the left center, the photograph's original caption, which identifies the location as: "In a Niche 50 feet above Present Cañon Bed," provides a measure of scale.
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