In addition to Carl Sandburg’s many accomplishments as a writer, he was also a musician passionately interested in American traditional music. Sandburg frequently played songs during his readings, accompanying himself on guitar. In 1928 he published The American Songbag, a compendium of songs he had learned during his travels across the country. The book was immensely popular and remained in print long after Sandburg’s death. The book both pre-dated and influenced the folk revivals of the 1950s and 1960s, leading musician and music writer Stephen Griffith to call it “the Big Bang of folk music.”
Sandburg’s book The American Songbag, published in 1927
This photograph was originally given by Edward Steichen to poet, journalist, and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg. Steichen was introduced to Sandburg by his sister Lilian in 1907 on the Steichen family’s farm in Wisconsin. The two young men shared an intensity of interest in their respective fields, as well as a belief in finding an artistic voice that was distinctly American yet also emphatically new. Sandburg and Lilian Steichen married in 1908, thus cementing the personal and professional ties between the writer and photographer, ushering in a decades-long period of mutual creativity. Sandburg was a frequent subject for Steichen’s lens, and Steichen designed the jacket for Sandburg’s first book of poems. In 1929, Sandburg published Steichen The Photographer, a limited edition retrospective monograph. The two collaborated on a number of photography-related projects including the wartime Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Road to Victory. Throughout their lives, the two maintained a friendship characterized by a deep admiration of the work of the other.
Provenance
The photographer to Carl Sandburg By descent to his daughter, Helga Sandburg