These are my final set of pictures inspired by William G. Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was a writer living in the late 1800s who was interested in photography as a new medium and its potential. In 1897, he wanted to publish a new article in which he would create an alphabet and words using photographs he had taken of a circus group called the Three Delevines.
His photo style is mainly focused on transforming the human body into the shapes of letters. He is not interested in the identity of the circus performers, though sometimes he let their personalities show, like with the example of the letter M, with the performers smiling towards the camera.
At the end of the 1800s, photography was creating new possibilities for publications like The Strand Magazine, where the photographer’s “A Human Alphabet” was originally published. Photography could be used to make more interesting letters and words, which would also make people more interested in paying attention the word. The photographer realized the challenges of photographing the human body to make letters as some bodies are more defined and is shaped differently than others, from a quote that the photographer used he said that with the way E looked: “It is rather a pity that Mr. Harry Delevine’s body is so prominent, thereby making the upper part of the letter unduly thick. But what would you do? It was quite unavoidable.” By photographing human bodies as letters, Fitzgerald was making readers pay closer attention to the letters, something we use every day without really thinking about. Photography can make us look closer at the world and see everyday objects, like letters, from new perspectives.
