Elisabeth Tonnard

Song of Myself: American Renaissance consists of status updates collected from the official Facebook pages of Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. The title comes from Whitman’s poem ‘Song of Myself’, which opens: ‘I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.’

This is the special edition of Song of Myself that can also be used for exhibition. For installation views click here. See more images of the edition here.

The edition consists of 56 inkjet printed sheets at A3 size in an archival folder. There are seven copies plus one artist proof. In the colophon each of the seven copies is associated with one of the poets that appear in the project, i.e. there is Edgar Allan Poe’s copy, Emily Dickinson’s, Henry David Thoreau’s, Herman Melville’s, etcetera. The contents are the same between these copies.

Published in Leerdam, The Netherlands, 2015.

This special edition is sold out. If you are interested in the work, see the paperback version that is still available.

The edition is available in the following public collections: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature, and the National Library of The Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek).