Beowulf Sheehan says that every person who steps in front of his camera becomes a “superhero.” Based out of New York City, Sheehan has built a career photographing portraits, particularly for writers. His work involves “getting to know someone, learning from that person, and learning that person’s story.”
Sheehan emphasizes that what makes his work — reading, planning, and photographing — special is its ability to keep him curious: “One way we stay young at heart is to stay curious. Once you lose your curiosity, I think you have a really tough road ahead.”
Sheehan explains how this experience allows him to “return to my childhood every time I am commissioned to make a picture.” Sheehan then endeavors to capture a portrait reflective of his subject and their work.
Sheehan’s initial interest in photography started as a young child growing up in Fort Lauderdale, FL. His grandfather was many things: a pianist, poet, engineer, fencer, and photographer. Sheehan’s interest stemmed from his grandfather’s skills in using a camera so old that film is no longer made for it. Sheehan was also personally inclined to pursue photography due to his severe asthma as a child.
“I could not make it to first base and kickball without having an attack. So that made it really hard for me to be chosen for a team,” he recalls. “I retreated to a world in which I could do things. In the world of books […], in the world of what I created on a sheet of paper by drawing, I could do anything.”
Sheehan still loves books, stories, and superheroes, and he views every person he takes a portrait of as his superhero.
The consideration and creativity that goes into creating a portrait is a significant part of Sheehan’s work; his portraits of writers are complimented by their works. Sheehan reads his subjects’ works, familiarizes himself with their story, and crafts a beautiful portrait based on his understanding.
He recalls his work with Leslie Jameson, author of The Recovering, a book about how Jameson’s life had hit the wall of addiction and alcoholism, and she needed to find a way to tend to her own health and move forward in her life. Sheehan describes his process for deciding how to photograph Jameson: “I really clung to the idea of getting on the other side of a wall… I did some looking around, and I found a really nondescript wall, cinder block wall, in the East Village. What was interesting about that wall is that it had a door frame in it.” Sheehan found a symbol in this mundane wall, feeling it spoke to the nature of what Jameson had gone through. “I photographed her … coming off the walls as if she was walking, as if she had walked through that portal of a harrowing journey of life to a much more wonderful place in life.”
Sheehan has taken thousands of portraits, and he is unable to name his favorite portrait to date, “but I’ve had some incredible experiences and moments that I just never thought that I would have in my life, thanks to a little black box and a few lights and helpers,” he clarifies.
One recent moment that Sheehan describes as “beautiful” was with singer-songwriter Patti Smith. After quickly photographing Smith, Sheehan remembers approaching her and saying thank you for writing her memoir, Bread of Angels. He told her, “I am so glad your mother nursed you to health as you fought through scarlet fever and that you survived because my maternal grandmother passed from scarlet fever. I’m so grateful for the strength of your mother and the strength of you to be here and to be the gift you are to the world.” Smith then took Sheehan’s hand and told him, “I’m so sorry for your loss, and I’m so glad you read my book. I had a really, really wonderful mom, and I can see you clearly did too.” They embraced, and Sheehan explains how in that moment, he received “the great gift of empathy.” For Sheehan, it is important that he experiences empathy with his subjects and that something from their life can speak directly to his own. That, he says, “is such a gift.”
Asking Sheehan what one author he would like to photograph most, alive or dead, was an impossible question. Sheehan has imagined photographing Franz Kafka with a cup of coffee — because Kafka translates to coffee — Ernest Hemingway and the sea, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Alice Walker, Harper Lee, Seamus Heaney, or John Kennedy Toole. The list goes on. “Those are only the artists of letters,” Sheehan says, after listing out dozens of writers.
“I’m so glad I have too many answers, because having too many answers to a question like that speaks to passion for what one does. And I implore every reader of this article to give consideration to what it is about what you are passionate about […] I encourage you to embrace that passion, because in embracing and running with that passion, you will find your professional, personal happiness,” Sheehan concluded, ending the interview.
On Tuesday, March 3 at 5 p.m., Sheehan will be giving his talk, “The Literacy of Looking,” with Associate Professor of English Arisa White in Studio One of the Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts. Readers are encouraged to attend.
~ Molly Garvey `28
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