Bringing Literary Figures to Life
During a Colby residency, Presidential Fellow Beowulf Sheehan will share his passion for photographing famous writers
Acclaimed photographer Beowulf Sheehan, who specializes in portraits of writers and other artists, will be in residence at Colby through the spring semester as the College’s distinguished presidential fellow in arts. In this role, he will work with students and faculty in master classes, workshops, and the creation of new work that will result in an exhibition.
Sheehan, who lives in New York and began his fellowship in January, said he was drawn to the role at Colby to give back, impart the lessons of his experiences, and share his passion for photography and the arts. He described his residency as a commitment to community and to the notion of perpetuating the arts through human interactions and relationships.
“I’d like to think I’ve gotten to the point where I have something to say. I can speak, I can show, and I can create with and for Colby students and the Colby community. I can’t imagine what else the responsibility of a residency might be,” Sheehan said. He is eager to share and learn equally: “We’re here to lift and in turn be lifted up by others.”
As part of his fellowship, Sheehan will interact with students and faculty across departments, disciplines, and divisions. He plans to collaborate with DavisConnects and the Center for the Arts and Humanities to talk about establishing careers in photography and in the arts.
At 5 p.m. March 3 at the Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts, Sheehan will present a public discussion with Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing Arisa White on the topic of reading a photograph. He will also work with students who take photographs as part of their student work or as a hobby. As part of the Colby College Museum of Art’s Art Break program, on April 23 at 12:30 p.m. he will give his interpretation of a piece of art on view.
Poet Richard Blanco served as Colby’s most recent presidential fellow in arts and community life in 2025.
Sheehan’s work has been published in The New Yorker, Esquire, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and other publications. His photographs have been exhibited at institutions such as the Dostoevsky Museum (Saint Petersburg, Russia), International Center of Photography, Museum of the City of New York, and have been included in the permanent collections of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and elsewhere.
President David A. Greene said the photographer captures the inner personalities of his subjects, and his photographs will be forever recognized for their power and beauty.
“The irony of being a prized author is that the work stands alone, such that the writer is often rendered invisible,” said Greene. “Beowulf’s artistic practice, in his books and images, brings these literary figures to life. It is a well-earned recognition for them—and the care, creativity, and singular approach of his photography does real justice to the remarkable individuals whose words and storytelling define the contemporary canon of literary history.”
An artist of artists
Sheehan’s primary subjects are figures in the arts and humanities. Recent subjects include Ta-Nehisi Coates, Annie Lennox, Zohran Mamdani, and Patti Smith. He’s photographed more than 1,000 writers from around the world, many of whom appear in his 2018 book Author: The Portraits of Beowulf Sheehan (Black Dog & Leventhal), which includes a foreword by the writer Salman Rushdie, a friend. Autofocus Books will publish his second book, The Father of the Man: The Last Author Portrait Sitting with Cormac McCarthy, in September.
Sheehan spent a day with McCarthy in August 2014, making pictures for McCarthy’s then-forthcoming novel The Passenger, which was published eight years later, in the fall of 2022, two months before Stella Maris, his final novel. McCarthy, who won the National Book Award in 1992 for All the Pretty Horses and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007 for The Road, died in 2023. Sheehan’s forthcoming book takes its title from McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian and captures Sheehan’s admiration and respect for the writer. “It’s about my day with him, but it’s also springboarding from that day with him to being an ode to his art. Much of his art is about the love of a father for a son and of a son for a father. I explore a relationship with my father through that work, too,” he said.
Sheehan grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. His mother was a translator who processed documents related to international shipping businesses in Port Everglades. His father worked as a tugboat owner and operator. They divorced when he was in the fifth grade.
As a little boy, he had asthma and did not participate in sports. Instead, he retreated to books. “At that age, it was comic books, and I devoured that world. I was at the point where I didn’t always want to wait another month to go back to 7-Eleven and catch the new issue of Spider-Man or whatever it was. So I would draw the rest of the story.” In high school, he dreamed of becoming a sculptor. “To some end, I suppose I am, because I’m giving shape to a face with light, both the presence and absence thereof.”
He describes his art as “celebrating storytellers in photographs and trying to get other people excited about these artists and their works. … Working mostly with artists of letters, working with writers, making photos for their books, is a source of never-ending joy for me. I think of myself very much as a bookseller with a camera.”
“I am thrilled that our community will have the opportunity to celebrate Beowulf’s contributions and learn from him,” Greene said. “What a gift to us all.”
