‘As a photographer you get to know human nature’

From The March by E. L. Doctorow:

 Calvin felt a chill remembering that back in Georgia, at the camp in the pine trees, where General Sherman had his headquarters, Mr. Culp did not need but a minute to persuade the General to pose for his picture who even called his entire staff to pose with him. Mr. Culp said to Calvin, As a photographer you get to know human nature, and one thing about human nature is that it is the most famous people who think they are not getting enough of the world’s attention. So they want their picture taken and put on display, or their portrait painted or books written about them, and no matter how much of this is done it is never enough for some of these people, except maybe for President Abraham Lincoln, who is an exception in this as in just about everything. Because Mr. Culp had taken his picture, too, before leaving Washington, and it had been an effort to get the President to sit down for it, and he wouldn’t have, had Mrs. Lincoln not insisted.

IMAGE: Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman (Atlanta, Georgia, 1864) by George N. Barnard