THE PHOTO-FINISH OF HENRY AND MARIAN ADAMS La «foto-finish» de Henry Y Marian Adams Edward SCHWARZSCHILD* University at Albany, SUNY Abstract This essay focuses on the relationship between an amateur photographer, Marian Adams, and her husband, the writer and historian Henry Adams, in the larger context of the history of photography’s influence on American literary culture. Since the advent of the daguerreotype in the late 1830s, writers all over the world have embraced and attacked, adored and ignored, the idea of photographic repre- sentation. The collision between writing and photography has shaped particular works as well as broader movements, from realism to naturalism to modernism. Macabre as it is, the tradition of postmortem photography touches close to the heart of photography’s enduring power. The relationship between Marian and Henry Adams helps to reveal some of the specific ways in which American wri- ters have tried to collect and curate the intimations of mortality and imperma- nence they inevitably confront in photography. Key words: photography, Henry Adams, Marian Adams, american literary cul- ture, history of photography. Resumen En este artículo se analiza la relación entre una fotógrafa aficionada, Marian Adams, y su marido, el escritor e historiador Henry Adams, en el marco de la influencia de la fotografía en la cultura literaria estadounidense. Desde la aparición del da- guerrotipo a finales de la década de 1830, los escritores de todo el mundo se han * Fulbright Senior Lecturer, University of Zaragoza at Teruel. Associate Professor of En- glish, University at Albany, SUNY. Correo electrónico: [email protected]. Fe- cha de recepción del artículo: 28 de febrero de 2008. Fecha de aceptación y versión final: junio de 2008. STVDIVM. Revista de Humanidades, 14 (2008) ISSN: 1137-8417, pp. 9-28 12 ][ EDWARD SCHWARZSCHILD The Photo-Finish of Henry and Marian Adams debatido entre abrazar y atacar, venerar e ignorar la idea de la representación foto- gráfica. El choque entre la escritura y la fotografía ha dado forma tanto a obras individuales como a movimientos más amplios, desde el realismo al naturalismo y al modernismo. A pesar de lo macabro que pueda resultar, la tradición de la foto- grafía post mortem se encuentra arraigada en lo más hondo de la imperecedera fuerza de la fotografía. La relación entre Marian y Henry Adams ayuda a descu- brir algunas de las formas concretas mediante las cuales los escritores estadouni- denses han tratado de captar y acceder a las manifestaciones de la mortalidad y de lo efímero que, inevitablemente, encontraban en la fotografía. Palabras clave: fotografía, Henry Adams, Marian Adams, cultura literaria esta- dounidense, historia de la fotografía. This essay focuses on the relationship between an amateur photographer, Marian Adams, and her husband, the writer and historian Henry Adams, in the larger context of the history of photography’s influence on American literary culture. Since the advent of the daguerreotype in the late 1830s, writers all over the world have embraced and attacked, adored and ignored, the idea of photographic representation. The collision between writing and photography has shaped particular works as well as broader movements, from realism to naturalism to modernism. Recently, there’s been consider- able attention paid to the tradition of postmortem photography in the United States —in the last few decades, there have been books, articles, cat- alogues, gallery shows, and museum exhibitions on the topic1. Macabre as it is, this tradition touches close to the heart of photography’s enduring power and some of the finest critical writing on photography investigates this power. Echoing the work of Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag has claimed that «Photography... converts the world into a cemetery»2. Like Barthes, she finds in every photograph an insistent reminder of human mortality. 1. See Stanley Burns, Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America, Altadena, CA, Twelvetree Press, 1990; Dan Meinwald, Memento Mori: Death in Nineteenth-Century Photography, Riverside, California Museum of Photography, 1990; Cathy N. Davidson, «Photographs of the Dead: Sherman, Daguerre, Hawthorne», in Southern Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 89:4, Fall 1990, pp. 667-701; Barbara Norfleet, Looking at Death, Boston, Godine, 1993; Jay Ruby, Secure the Shadow, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1995. See also Michael Lesy, Wisconsin Death Trip, New York, Pantheon, 1973; James Van Der Zee, Harlem Book of the Dead, Dobbs Ferry, NY, Morgan and Morgan, 1978. 2. Susan Sontag, in Peter Hujar, Portraits of Life and Death, New York, Da Capo Press, 1976, p. 1. STVDIVM. Revista de Humanidades, 14 (2008) ISSN: 1137-8417, pp. 9-28 The Photo-Finish of Henry and Marian Adams EDWARD SCHWARZSCHILD ][ 13 She’s also commented on how collections of photographs come to resemble «featherweight portable museums»3. The relationship between Marian and Henry Adams helps to establish a convincing historical and theoretical con- text for such comments, revealing some of the ways in which American writers have tried to collect and curate the intimations of mortality and impermanence they inevitably confront in photography. Such intimations are taken to an extreme in the case of Marian Adams. Figure 1. The Artist in His Museum 3. Susan Sontag, On Photography, New York, Anchor, 1990, p. 68. STVDIVM. Revista de Humanidades, 14 (2008) ISSN: 1137-8417, pp. 9-28 14 ][ EDWARD SCHWARZSCHILD The Photo-Finish of Henry and Marian Adams A useful and interesting introductory image is Charles Willson Peale’s famous 1822 self-portrait, made when he was eighty-one, entitled The Artist in His Museum (Figure 1). This image might at first seem rather unrelated to a discussion of Henry and Marian Adams, but with seventeen children and three wives, Peale is in one way or another connected to much of American cultural history. Indeed, Peale painted both John and John Quincy Adams. More crucial, however, for this essay, is the impor- tance of taxidermy to this painting and the importance of preservation to the museum that Peale so desperately wanted to make into a national institution. Throughout his long curatorial career, Peale attempted to use various forms of visual technology, like the physiognotrace, to preserve an order he felt would demonstrate personal as well as national distinction. There were the paintings, the drawings, the silhouettes, the taxidermy, and more4. What Donna Haraway has written of early twentieth-century American taxidermy illuminates Peale’s lifelong struggle to preserve and publicly exhibit the dead: his museum full of specimens is predicated on the belief that «the body can be transcended,» as if it were possible to birth a «better than life» world «from dead matter»5. Haraway argues that Taxidermy was about the single story, about nature’s unity, the unblemished type specimen... The power of this stance is in its magical effects: what is so painfully constructed appears effortlessly, spontaneously found, discovered, simply there if one will only look... This art repays labor with transcendence6. To maintain the control he desired, Peale worked to suppress his own physical vulnerability: he would «magically» find only transcendence —both national and individual— in his «painfully constructed» museum world. The spectacle Peale sought to create, then, would ideally transform the fact of physical vulnerability into a didactic, carefully organized, display; the pictures and objects he exhibited were poised precariously between life 4. For more on Peale, his museum, and visual culture, see David Brigham, Public Culture in the Early Republic: Peale’s Museum and Its Audience, Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. See also my «Death-Defying/Defining Spectacles: Charles Will- son Peale as Early American Freak Showman,» in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson, New York, New York University Press, 1996, pp. 82-96. 5. Donna Haraway, «Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936,» in Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science, New York, Routledge, 1989, pp. 26-58, esp. 38. 6. Ib., p. 38. STVDIVM. Revista de Humanidades, 14 (2008) ISSN: 1137-8417, pp. 9-28 The Photo-Finish of Henry and Marian Adams EDWARD SCHWARZSCHILD ][ 15 and death, placed in something of a hybrid, unnatural, «other» world against which Peale could define himself and his desired universe. To give just one brief example of the extremes to which Peale would go in this regard, consider his treatment of one of his models, Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was such a powerful model that Peale desired not only to emulate, but also to embalm him. Speaking to his Museum trustees in 1792, Peale said, «Sorry I am that I did not propose the means of...preservation to that distinguished patriot and worthy philosopher, Doctor Franklin... it is not improbable that... he could have been prevailed on, to suffer the remains of his body to be... in our view»7. This curious desire to execute and publicly exhibit human taxidermy is merely the natural extension of Peale’s devotion to preservation and the framed spectacle. His museum contained hundreds of taxidermic specimens, he also displayed mummies, and, on at least one occasion, he tried assiduously to procure for exhibition the body of an em- balmed child8. Human taxidermy could, Peale imagined, «hand down to succeeding generations, the relicks of such great men» —the «actual re- mains» would provide posterity with information and knowledge which could not possibly be gleaned from mere painted portraits; a gallery of stuffed, famous men would enable his nation’s citizenry to better appreci- ate the distinctions and successes of its antecedents9. Such a display, of course, would also foreground human mortality and a sense of the impermanence of such human constructions as identity and culture, but Peale presents himself as firmly in control, capable of making the dead bodies «speak» only of progress, potential, and unity.