As a young photojournalist documenting civil strife in Northern Ireland during the early 1970s, P. Michael O’Sullivan once captured on film a rubber bullet fired by a British soldier toward him.
The bullet just missed Mr. O’Sullivan. But the picture exists as a tribute to the courage that drove the once internationally acclaimed Chicago photographer.
Mr. O’Sullivan, 64, died Sunday, Sept. 19, of lung cancer at Lincoln Park Hospital.
His death came 22 years after a motorcycle accident left him partially paralyzed and with brain damage, no longer able to speak fluently about the hundreds of times he had a front seat to history.
Mr. O’Sullivan was never one to back down from a dangerous moment, said Don Johnson, a friend since 1968 and a fellow journalist.
“He had this courage and grace under fire,” Johnson said. “He would go anywhere with his camera.”
That fearlessness put a photo he took of Detroit’s 1967 riots on the cover of Life magazine. Mr. O’Sullivan also captured close-up shots of the violence outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and of the riots in the city earlier that year after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
A former U.S. Army paratrooper, Mr. O’Sullivan adhered to an in-your-face documentary style of photojournalism reminiscent of the classic shots of the Spanish Civil War taken by his idol, Robert Capa, friends and family said.
He mastered that method during the year he spent behind the lines during the struggle in Northern Ireland with soldiers from the Irish Republican Army, an assignment that led to Mr. O’Sullivan’s 1972 book, “Patriot Graves: Resistance in Ireland.”
The reporting that led to that collection of stark black-and-white pictures of IRA soldiers cleaning their guns or the bloody aftermath of British assaults became Mr. O’Sullivan’s life passion.
An eyewitness to the 1972 Bloody Sunday attack by British troops on civilian demonstrators in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Mr. O’Sullivan committed himself to portraying the Irish side of the fight for freedom from British rule.
Besides taking pictures, he interviewed IRA members who would someday become leaders of the revolutionary movement. His interview subjects included Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political ally, said Mr. O’Sullivan’s son-in-law Sean Harvey.
A 1971 article written by Mr. O’Sullivan for the Tribune relays a first-person account of “the troubles” in Northern Ireland from an anonymous IRA leader. The article describes IRA bank robberies and lays out a multifaceted strategy for Sinn Fein.
“He was a journalist that wasn’t bound by objectivity,” said Johnson, a former Newsweek reporter and CBS News producer. “That was probably because he was a freelancer. It was his subjects that became most important to him.”
Mr. O’Sullivan also embraced the tender aspects of life just as passionately, Johnson said. One photo, of an old man and woman walking hand-in-hand as they disappear around a bend, “still gets to me,” he said.
He also took pictures of singer Bob Dylan and members of the Rolling Stones in O’Rourke’s Pub on North Avenue, a favorite hangout for local celebrities and artists during the 1960s and ’70s, said his daughter, Siobhan Harvey.
Johnson said Mr. O’Sullivan’s passion for life extended to his love of fast motorcycles. That love nearly killed him in 1982 when his bike slipped out from under him. He was in a coma for several days and emerged partially paralyzed and unable to speak in full sentences.
For the rest of his life, Mr. O’Sullivan lived “essentially trapped inside his body,” said his son-in-law, who helped care for him during the last four years. “You can’t deny that the wreck ruined part of his intellect, but he was there for you if you knew how to speak to him.”
Said his daughter, “He still loved a good laugh.”
In addition to his daughter and son-in-law, Mr. O’Sullivan is survived by his wife, Victoria; a son, Sean; brothers Robert Kirkpatrick and Terrance D. O’Sullivan; sisters Phyllis Corona and Susan Callahan; and four grandchildren.
A memorial service is planned from 4:30 to 10 p.m. Saturday at the Irish American Heritage Center, 4626 N. Knox Ave., Chicago.
