Portrait Gallery of "Representative" Americans

In Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman was speaking of himself and on behalf of America when he wrote:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Because America is a country of the "many," it may be difficult to identify a single person who embodies all of the characteristics that are traditionally associated with Americans. The portrait gallery below is an attempt to assemble a collection of individuals who together represent a vision of the nation.

The gallery below includes both famous and "ordinary" Americans. See how many you can identify, and think about what kind of statement each picture makes about what it means to be an American. Who would you include if you were going to create a portrait gallery of representative Americans?

Please write if you would like to propose an individual who you believe should be included in this gallery, or if you would like to propose a gallery of your own for possible inclusion as part of The E Pluribus Unum Project.

If you would like to see how some American national institutions deal with the question of how to depict "the" American, you might find it interesting to think about the images used on the home pages of the American Memory site of the Library of Congress, and of the National Portrait Gallery.

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If you would like to search for your own picture of a representative American, you might wish to look through some of the following collections:

America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945

American Memory: Jazz ~ William P. Gottlieb ~ Photographs ~ 1938-1948

The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920: Photographs from the Fred Hultstrand and F.A. Pazandak Photograph Collections

The National Portrait Gallery: note special online exhibitions, especially--

Negotiating the American Identity in the National Portrait Gallery
Smithsonian American Art Museum

The E Pluribus Unum Project is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and directed by Dr. John McClymer (Department of History), and Dr. Lucia Knoles (Department of English) of Assumption College. Visitors are encouraged to send inquiries or suggestions.