A scrapbook open to show two pages on which have been affixed eight different photographic depictions of Walt Whitman, each numbered and most accompanied by handwritten captions

Henry Scholey Saunders (1864–1951)
100 Whitman Photographs
Toronto: Published by the author, 1939
Susan Jaffe Tane Collection of Walt Whitman, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature

100 Whitman Photographs

The American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was acutely aware of the power of portraiture. In 1855, he self-published Leaves of Grass with the famous (and, for the time, shocking) frontispiece portrait of him as a bohemian “rough.” He became fascinated with photography in the 1840s, and he sat for portraits regularly throughout his life. “No man has been photographed more than I have,” he claimed. Whitman was almost always photographed alone, but this page includes an unusual portrait of the poet with Pete Doyle, Whitman’s lover during the 1860s and 70s. This book of photographs was arranged, bound, and issued by the collector Henry S. Saunders.

: Susan Jaffe Tane Collection of Walt Whitman, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collec…

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