Source: Flickr
“No man has been photographed more than I have” (Walt Whitman). According to Ed Folsom in his article, Photographs and Photographers, Walt Whitman was “the most photographed writer of the nineteenth century,” with over 130 portraits taken during his lifetime. Photography, then, was a crucial and integral piece of Whitman’s life, capturing his journey from a young man to the old grey beard likeness that has become so recognizable and synonymous to many. Over the course of this semester, the topic of conversation that resonated with me the most was the depictions of Whitman’s world in his poetry and the subsequent dichotomous negative depictions of the Post-Whitman world in works by Garcia Lorca or Calvin Hernton. For my final project, I plan on doing a photo essay that traces the decay of Whitman’s perceived world by using his poetry and poetry of other artists we have studied this semester. In the same way that Whitman’s life was captured with photos, my photo essay will attempt to capture how different our world is now from his idealized view through the visualization of different poetic works and visions.
In the essay portion of my project, I plan to do a close-reading of the poetry and isolate how my particular set of photos captures, not only the essence of the poem, but the overall theme of Whitman’s decaying world. This close-reading and analysis will be emphasized through the use of primary and secondary sources to substantiate my assertions. “For Whitman,” according to Folsom, “photography was one of the great examples of how nineteenth-century technological advancement provided a concomitant spiritual advancement […] the photograph [froze] time and space by holding a moment and a place permanently in view: it transformed the fleeting into the permanent.” As it is in most photo essays, I plan to tell a narrative through my series of photos that will capture and illustrate the feelings expressed by both Whitman and his contemporaries in the works chosen for this project.
For my photography element of this project, I will be using both digital and film cameras in order to create a diverse reflective collection of photos. Depending on what the photo calls for, I will also be using a photo editing application, Adobe Lightroom, in order to adjust lighting and color correct the images as necessary to further facilitate any meaning or emotion indicative in the photo. Similarly, as Folsom notes, “Whitman attempted to create a poetic field just as cluttered as a photograph; he would try to maintain an open attentiveness to the things of the world so that he could absorb in his poem anything that the sun illuminated, just as photos did.” Every time I read or analyze a work of poetry, I cannot help but visualize what I am reading in my head. For me, this visualization helps in grasping what is being written on the page and it makes the message more tangible and powerful when I see it in my mind’s eye, rather than just reading flat words on the page. The visualization gives the work a new and energetic life. I hope that by creating this photo essay, it will give students the opportunity to look at these poems in that different light and, hopefully, further emphasize the messages presented in each work on a grander, more elaborate and invested scale.
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