Double Exposure

“Singular … The wonder of this book […] is embedded in its DNA: It’s a survey, in the most glorious of definitions–a digressive, discursive, road-tripping wunderkammer between covers exploring our warring notions of the American West … Virtuosic … Double Exposure is the best book I’ve read about America […] in many, many years.” –Corey Seymour, Vogue

“Retracing O’Sullivan’s itinerary more than a century later for this study, Sullivan deftly takes up such themes as the political power of both photography and geology, the United States’ tortured racial hierarchies, the exploitation of natural resources–including land, gold, and silver–and the dispossession of Indigenous communities.” –The New Yorker

“Sullivan, who attempted to retrace the photographer’s steps, evokes both these landscapes and the photographer’s approach in capturing their lonely essence. The author’s painstaking account of the warring personalities and insider baseball of the expeditions, rife with politics, occasional violence and outright corruption, shows what was at stake–control of a vast, rich and ripe-for-exploitation region.” –Mary Ann Gwinn, Los Angeles Times

“A fascinating account of a crucial photographer of westward expansion and a reckoning with the colonization of the American West … Sullivan’s research is meticulous and his storytelling engaging. O’Sullivan is an intriguing figure, but what is most fascinating is the author’s examination of westward expansion as a kind of war of both arms and ideas … A riveting, highly valuable reexamination.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A compelling, haunted work of living history.” –Booklist (starred review)

“A large-hearted, wide-angled book, gutsy in the extreme, that cinches the reader tight to some of the most powerful landscapes in America. Robert Sullivan follows the nineteenth-century footsteps of photographer Timothy O’Sullivan, reports with artistry and passion on what they both saw, and makes you love the country in its darkness as well as its light. The double story–Sullivan’s and O’Sullivan’s–and the pinpoint details drew me in so I couldn’t put it down.” –Ian Frazier, author of Cranial Fracking and On the Rez

“An astonishment, a terror, a revelation, of what can and cannot be seen. Double Exposure is a survey and a memoir–an investigation–of spectacle frozen in time, bleeding across a dangerous American land. ‘Light is alive, ’ writes Sullivan, and so, too, are these brilliant pages; they shimmer with vision. Sullivan’s masterpiece should change the way we see past and present, this country and our many troubled selves.” –Jeff Sharlet, bestselling author of The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War

“Robert Sullivan’s extraordinary book wears many hats: it is a biography of a phantom; an important slice of photographic history; a profound meditation on the American landscape; a reckoning with the legacies of slavery, the Civil War, and the war against the indigenous population; and a deep personal journey for the author on top of that. It is just as transformative an experience for the reader.” –Lucy Sante, author of Low Life and I Heard Her Call My Name

Robert Sullivan is the author of numerous books, including Rats, The Meadowlands, A Whale Hunt, and My American Revolution. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, and New York, and he is a contributing editor at A Public Space. He was born in New York City, worked for many years in Portland, Oregon, and now lives in Philadelphia. He is the recipient of a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship.