“No man has been photographed more than I have,” Walt Whitman once said, and with the exception of Mark Twain, this was true. Whitman held a fascination with portrait photography since its introduction in the United States in the early 1840s. He sat for numerous portraits over the course of his life, and 130 survive today. Taken together, they document an idea that Whitman had tried to capture in his poetry: the identity of the self as it changes over time and space.

Portrait photography also addressed Whitman’s concern with the creation of a truly democratic art form. His own poetry often sought to capture the experience of the marginalized and overlooked, dealing with moments and people that had not been previously thought about in poetic terms. For Whitman, photography captured this same honesty: “I find I often like the photographs better than the oils. They are perhaps mechanical, but they are honest.” Indeed, unlike the painter’s brush, the camera could not freely edit its subject matter. As a portrait technique, it was also much more readily available to the masses, which perhaps made it democratic in the truest sense.

Stereographs were a Victorian novelty that sought to transform standard photographs into dynamic, “three-dimensional” landscapes. By taking a photo from two slightly different angles and viewing them side-by-side through a lens, the images would combine and appear to have depth. Although the idea had existed as early as 1838, it was not until the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the London Crystal Palace that a portable version of a stereoscope was popularized. Soon thereafter, stereographic images became ubiquitous in American homes, and were used to transport the viewer to locations all around the world without having to leave their parlor. In addition to exotic locales, popular figures and celebrities were common stereographic images, including Walt Whitman. This technology certainly contributed to the widespread proliferation of Whitman’s visage, which only served to reinforce his fascination with photography’s democratic appeal.