Whitman's friend Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke called this quarter-plate daguerreotype "the 'Christ' likeness," and saw signs in it of Whitman's illumination, the "moment this carpenter too became seer. . . and he saw and knew the Spirit of God." Bucke believed that "something of this spiritual elevation can still be seen" in this photo (The New England Magazine, "Portraits of Walt Whitman," March 1899, Vol. XX, No. 1, pp. 40, 36).

Whitman remembered less lofty circumstances under which the portrait was taken in the summer of 1854. He told Horace Traubel:

"I was sauntering along the street: the day was hot: I was dressed just as you see me there. A friend of mine—Gabriel Harrison (you know him? ah! yes!—he has always been a good friend!)—stood at the door of his place looking at the passers-by. He cried out to me at once: ‘Old man!—old man!—come here: come right up stairs with me this minute’—and when he noticed that I hesitated cried still more emphatically: ‘Do come: come: I’m dying for something to do.’ This picture was the result." (With Walt Whitman in Camden, Friday, October 19, 1888)

Despite these humble beginnings, the portrait appears to have been used to help create the frontispiece of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass and, as such, remains one of the most iconic images of Whitman—taken in the prime of his youth and less than a year before the publication of his seminal work. The place the original quarter plate daguerreotype was created is unknown, though it was probably New York.

For more information on Gabriel Harrison, see "Notes on Whitman's Photographers."