Timothy H. O'Sullivan show at National Gallery of American Art, Washington DC

[TheFlyingCamera]

Another terrific photography exhibit at the American Art museum in Washington DC. If you have the chance, go see this show. This is a first in a long time showing of a significant body of the O'Sullivan works from his survey expeditions in the 1860s and 70s. The American Art museum is becoming a first-class photography exhibition center. I can't sing their praises enough. Another great thing about them is they stay open until 7pm, whereas the National Gallery and many of the other Smithsonian museums close at 5.

http://americanart.si.edu/exhibition...010/osullivan/

[jgjbowen]

Scott,

Thanks for the heads-up

[brian steinberger]

Awesome! Thanks for the info. I'm gonna try and check it out.

[colrehogan]

Thanks for the info and the link. It looks interesting.

[TheFlyingCamera]

If you can't make it to the show, think about ordering the exhibition catalog. Another reason to sing the praises of the NGAA - they're producing some outstanding catalogs which really go above and beyond to discuss the works, their context, and the thinking behind the show, not just a bunch of pretty pictures.

[c6h6o3]

Another terrific photography exhibit at the American Art museum in Washington DC. If you have the chance, go see this show. This is a first in a long time showing of a significant body of the O'Sullivan works from his survey expeditions in the 1860s and 70s. The American Art museum is becoming a first-class photography exhibition center. I can't sing their praises enough. Another great thing about them is they stay open until 7pm, whereas the National Gallery and many of the other Smithsonian museums close at 5.

http://americanart.si.edu/exhibition...010/osullivan/

Both the NGAA and the National Portrait Gallery seem to be putting the NGA to shame recently. Both galleries had blockbuster shows the last time we were there. (For those of you not from around here, both museums are in the same building.)

[Barry S]

I agree--both are well-run, beautifully curated museums. I'm putting the O'Sullivan show on my list. Are they all albumen prints from collodion negatives?

[TheFlyingCamera]

The O'Sullivan works are all albumen prints, I would assume from collodion negatives (theoretically possible the last ones could have been dry plates I suppose, but I don't think so). There's a nice collection of vintage stereoviews as well. There are some more modern prints by living and/or recently deceased photographers who have shot in the same landscapes that O'Sullivan did, to provide a bit of contrast and context for his work, and those are mostly silver-gelatin prints, but perhaps only a dozen or less of the more than a hundred images on the wall.

[Barry S]

Cool, thanks. I see they're having an interesting free symposium in April; sounds like a good day to take off from work.

[Bruce Watson]

Saw it this weekend. Quite a nice exhibit, and well attended. A little too well, but then again it was a weekend. :rolleyes:

Interesting to me was the nearly uniform quality he was able to get from both the wet plate collodion negatives and the albumen prints. The print surfaces are nearly identical -- where there machine coated albumen print papers available in the 1870s? Still difficult to believe that he could get such consistency while coating and processing those glass plates in the field.

I was less impressed by the book. I can't figure out why they wanted to shrink the images (the glass plates are 10 x 12 inches apparently) and leave such large boarders around the images. Each plate in the book is nearly as much white space as it is image, and the images looked to be about 2/3 full size.