Modern Art Notes podcast link here.
Something that is discussed in this podcast is the way O'Sullivan literally leaves his own mark on his landscape photographs - he is often in the pictures or else has his wagon or darkroom tent or even his footsteps drawing attention to his presence. This is usually seen as valuable for providing scale but none of his contemporaries used this approach.
As the images he made were destined to be turned into hand-drawn lithographs for geological reports he knew that he was simply collecting data that could and would be worked on before being distributed, much as images are Photoshopped prior to publication today. Which in no way begins to explain the Cottonwood Lake, Wasatch Mountains image, where he foregrounds himself in the act of studying a negative possibly of the actual landscape he is in.
Something that is discussed in this podcast is the way O'Sullivan literally leaves his own mark on his landscape photographs - he is often in the pictures or else has his wagon or darkroom tent or even his footsteps drawing attention to his presence. This is usually seen as valuable for providing scale but none of his contemporaries used this approach.
As the images he made were destined to be turned into hand-drawn lithographs for geological reports he knew that he was simply collecting data that could and would be worked on before being distributed, much as images are Photoshopped prior to publication today. Which in no way begins to explain the Cottonwood Lake, Wasatch Mountains image, where he foregrounds himself in the act of studying a negative possibly of the actual landscape he is in.