 |
1889. Frederick Gutekunst, Philadelphia. Saunders #111. Courtesy Ohio
Wesleyan University, Bayley Collection.
Whitman
commented that the photos from this sitting were all
successful, "in fact would be considered very fine--in their
smoothification--the quality that never pleases me." But this
may be the pose that Whitman disliked and joked with Horace Traubel
about: "it is destined for the fire--irrevocably: look at the
formal pose--the expression, too, a damnable one!" On the
Library of Congress copy, Traubel has written, "Except for the
photograph taken by Easkins-O'Donovan. . . . in Walt's own room
in November 1891, the Gutekunst sittings, of which this is one
result, were the last secured from him by a photographer. |