SEAN ROSS MEEHAN Emerson's Photographic Thinking The fate of my books is like the impression of my face. My acquain- ,I tances as long back as I can remember, have always said, "Seems to me you look a little thinner than when I saw you last." -Emerson, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks (1850; II: 214) MANY ACCOUNTS, INCLUDING HIS OWN, Emerson was B y I' not a photogenic man. There is a curious and telling exchange found within the celebrated legacy of Emerson's correspondence with Thomas Carlyle that speaks to his apparent photographic misrepresen- tativeness. At Emerson's request, Carlyle had sent a photographic like- ness-"Yes, you shall have that sun-shadow, a Daguerreotype likeness" Carlyle writes him in 1846-which Emerson would receive with great pleasure: "I have what I have wished," Emerson would write back of the photograph's arrival. "I confirm my recollections & make new observa- tions: it is life to life. Thanks to the Sun." Emerson, however, would have trouble returning the favor. He would write to Carlyle, explaining the delay as a problem he was experiencing in having his own likeness taken, "I was in Boston the other day, and went to the best reputed Daguerreotypist, but though I brought home three transcripts of my face, the housemates voted them rueful, supremely ridiculous, I must sit again, or ... I must not sit again, not being of the right complexion which Daguerre & iodine delight in" (Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle 398). After trying and failing yet again, Emerson would send a photographic image whose persistent misrepresentativeness Carlyle would confirm in receiving it. "This Image is altogether unsatisfactory, illusive, and even in some measure tragical to me! First of all, it is a bad Photograph; no eyes discernible, at least one of the eyes not, except in rare favourable lights .... I could not at first, nor can I yet with perfect Arizona Quarterly Volume 62, Number 2, Summer 2006 Copyright © 2006 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004-1610