Double Exposure: Resurveying the West with Timothy O’Sullivan, America’s Most Mysterious War Photographer

Journalist Sullivan (Rats) blends memoir, biography, and history for a meditative if diffuse portrait of celebrated 19th-century photographer Timothy O’Sullivan (1840–1882) and the changing landscape of the American West. Entranced by the pictures of landscapes, towns, and mines that O’Sullivan captured on surveying expeditions in the 1870s, Sullivan set out to “resurvey [his] surveys” by visiting the sites of some of his most well-known shots. Though the paucity of available biographical information makes O’Sullivan an enigmatic subject, Sullivan fills in the gaps with detailed accounts of the expeditions, describing, among other episodes, boats sinking in Colorado River and a tyrannical expedition leader who has a Native American boy tortured after a mule goes missing. Sullivan’s own presence in the narrative adds dark, nervous tension, whether he’s “feel[ing] useless and down” after spilling coffee on himself at a motel or weathering a terrifying nerve injury, and his photographic analyses are rich and evocative (“The accuracy in O’Sullivan’s [frame] is in the way it illustrates how the dune... envelops a person as if they were afloat in a creamy white sea,” he writes about an image of Nevada’s Sand Mountain). Unfortunately, Sullivan’s attempts to reckon with America’s legacy of slavery, dispossession, and environmental destruction feel less focused. Though there’s plenty to admire, this doesn’t quite stick the landing. Photos. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (Apr.)