In October 1916, the photographer, Alvin Langdon Coburn, and the poet, Ezra Pound, collaborated on a project that, Pound claimed, “[freed] the -camera from reality and let one take Picassos direct from nature” (L/JQ88). By fastening three of Pound’s shaving mirrors together into a triangle and setting them under a kind of glass light table, they produced an instrument they named the “vortescope,” through which they took photographs of crystals, bits of wood and Pound himself (Coburn Autobiog...