O’Sullivan spent two years as the official photographer for a survey led by geologist Clarence King. Over the first winter the group documented mining activity at the Comstock Lode, the first major silver discovery in the U.S., which generated large fortunes, stimulated development in Virginia City and San Francisco, and spurred great advances in mining technology. At the Savage Mine, O’Sullivan photographed these miners and their equipment at the shaft landing before they descended 900 feet underground, where he would make some of the first subterranean photographs in the country.

This carefully balanced image conveys the mining process as a difficult but lucrative one, showing men waiting to descend on the left and full ore carts being pushed out on the right. It was the first of the King survey photographs published in the official reports submitted to Congress, but other O’Sullivan images of dangerous conditions and the aftermath of cave-ins were not included.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023).