Rock carved by drifting sand, below fortification rock, Arizona / T.H. O'Sullivan, phot. – Antique Print
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
Few images capture their era like this historic photograph of Rock carved by drifting sand, below fortification rock, Arizona / T.H. O'Sullivan, phot.. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.
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Rock carved by drifting sand, below fortification rock, Arizona / T.H. O'Sullivan, phot.
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Timothy O'Sullivan's plate 14 turns the camera on a small, sculpted rock in Arizona, where wind-driven sand has worn grooves and hollows into the stone below a larger fortification-like formation. The picture was made in 1871 during the Wheeler Survey, one of the federal exploratory surveys of the American West west of the 100th meridian that sent teams and photographers into unmapped country. O'Sullivan's albumen prints from these expeditions were published by the War Department in 1875 and later reissued, and they remain valued for documenting landforms with a scientific eye. Look closely at the textures, which show how slowly erosion shapes stone in the desert.
| Created / published | 1871 |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 photographic print : albumen. |
| Genre | Expedition photographs 1870-1880.Landscape photographs 1870-1880.Albumen prints 1870-1880. |
| Notes | Plate no. 14. Title from item. Originally published: Photographs showing landscapes, geological, and other features of portions of the western territory of the United States, obtained in connection with geographical and geological explorations and surveys west of the 100th meridian, seasons of 1871, 1872, and 1873. [Washington, D.C.] : War Dept., Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, [1875] Published in: Wheeler's photographic survey of the American West, 1871-1873 by George M. Wheeler ; with 50 landscape photographs by Timothy O'Sullivan and William Bell. New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 1983, Plate 14. |
| Subjects | Rock formations--Arizona--1870-1880. |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 1,536 × 1,245 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-123266 |
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