Bluff Opposite Big Horn Camp, Black Canon, Colorado River 1871

Curator: Timothy O'Sullivan's “Bluff Opposite Big Horn Camp, Black Canon, Colorado River" presents us with a striking view of the American West. The stark, almost monochromatic tones give it a powerful presence. Editor: It feels so monumental, but desolate. I wonder about the colonialist implications of representing this landscape as empty, ready for extraction and exploitation. Curator: Indeed. O'Sullivan was part of government survey expeditions. His photographs served a practical purpose: resource mapping. The very act of photographing transformed the land into a commodity. Editor: Exactly. This isn't just a landscape; it's a document complicit in westward expansion, displacing indigenous peoples and transforming ecosystems. Curator: Thinking about the wet plate collodion process he used, it's amazing that he could capture such detail under difficult field conditions. Editor: I agree. Thinking about it now, it is hard not to consider the human cost of that "achievement" in a critical light.