Timothy
O’Sullivan,
(b ?Ireland, 1840; d Staten Island, NY,
14 Jan 1882).
American photographer. He was employed in
the studio of Mathew Brady in Washington, DC, when the
Civil War (1861–5) broke out. After photographing the
early stages of the war in South Carolina, he left
Brady’s studio to work for ALEXANDER GARDNER, and almost
one half of the photographs in Gardner’s Photographic
Sketchbook of the War (?New York, 1866/R1959)
are by him. O’Sullivan’s war photographs, like
Gardner’s, moved beyond the superficial documentation of
battlefields and the mundane activities of armies, and
he began to photograph the grim reality of war; he is
particularly noted for his photographs of battlefield
dead.