But Miles Orvell thinks the camera brought Whitman to a new level. He was deeply affected by the photographic vision of reality. And the new poetic photography of the Leaves of Grass pans across the American scene just the way a camera would. Two years later, Whitman was enchanted by the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London. Like Leaves of Grass , the Crystal Palace was an utterly new structure that housed an indiscriminate panorama of modern life.
Culture is, after all, the mirror of technology.
Whitman saw that truth with photographic clarity, and he used it to build a vision of America that lay beyond even the camera's reach. Orvell, M., Whitman's Transformed Eye. Whitman, W., Leaves of Grass . For more on Whitman and his use of visual imagery, see Episode 1030 .