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| Anonymous Photographer Stable Interior with Grooms ca. 1900-1910 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| G. Dangereux Flooded Seine in Paris 1910 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| G. Dangereux Flooded Seine in Paris 1910 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
Flood
Gold-brown upon the sated flood
The rock-vine clusters lift and sway:
Vast wings above the lambent waters brood
Of sullen day.
A waste of waters ruthlessly
Sways and uplifts its weedy mane,
Where brooding day stares down upon the sea
In dull disdain.
Uplift and sway, O golden vine,
Thy clustered fruits to love's full flood,
Lambent and vast and ruthless as is thine
Incertitude.
– James Joyce (1917)
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| Johannes Hendrikus Antonius Maria Lutz Three Women wearing Hats ca. 1907-1916 color print from glass plate negative Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| frères Seeberger La Mode aux Courses (Fashions at the Racetrack) 1912 gelatin silver print Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| frères Seeberger Fashionable Parisians Posing 1912 gelatin silver print Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| August Sander Farming Family 1912 gelatin silver print Tate Gallery |
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| August Sander Three Brothers ca. 1919 gelatin silver print Tate Gallery |
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| August Sander Varnisher ca. 1930 gelatin silver print Tate Gallery |
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| Clifton R. Adams Window at Saks Fifth Avenue, New York ca. 1920-35 print from glass plate negative Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
On a Window Display in a Western City
He changed the card, and pointed, and he twirled himself around
To show the sack suit's jaunty cut, "a twenty-dollar treat."
Behind the wide show-window's glass he ogled, strutted, frowned,
Disposed his collar, shot his cuffs, and twinkled, head to feet.
I stood amid the gaping crowd and watched him from the street.
That vest-adjusting marionette, that little lacquered slave
In serge and tweed without a crease, disported, deft and droll,
To coax our custom. Left and right he postured, pert or grave.
He arched his chest; he tried to smoothe – what creases from his soul?
I wondered if his underwear was one great thread-webbed hole!
A subtle pathos reached from him, for all his flashy strut,
We all would fain usurp the stage. 'Twas his heroic dream,
But warped by shrewd necessity; a climbing from the rut,
Like some bedraggled butterfly that crawls from grime to gleam,
However evanescent, where the public dump-heaps steam.
Tin cans and broken bottles often flash a diamond ray!
A little sun will dry the mire on wings that missed their mark!
I wondered whither went his bright-shod feet at end of day.
Did drink or drugs devour his soul? Perhaps in mornings dark
He crawled to some damp bench and stretched 'neath papers in the park.
Such thoughts contribute saving grace. Believe them? Lord, I must!
If voluntary choice were this! – it turns the stomach, quite, –
Where once these streets were open range, horned cattle stamped the dust,
And, bronzed and brown, unknown to town's insane electric light,
Beneath the deep blue, star-pricked skies men rode the herd by night!
– William Rose Benét (1915)
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| Arnold Genthe Portrait of Greta Garbo 1925 gelatin silver print Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Lisette Model Imogen Cunningham, San Francisco 1946 gelatin silver print National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa |
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| Anonymous Dutch Photographer Evacuation of painting, The Battle of Waterloo by Jan Willem Pieneman, from the Rijksmuseum 1939 gelatin silver print Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous Dutch Photographer Evacuation of painting, Civic Guardsmen by Govert Flinck, from the Rijksmuseum 1939 gelatin silver print Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous Dutch Photographer Evacuation of paintings from the Rijksmuseum 1939 gelatin silver print Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
The Museum
A clamor, in the distance. A crowd running under the rain beating
down, between the canvases the sea wind set clattering.
A man passes crying something. What is he saying? What he
knows! What he has seen! I make out his words. Ah, I almost
understand!
I took refuge in a museum. Outside the great wind mixed with
water reigns alone from now on, shaking the glass panes.
In each painting, I think, it's as if God were giving up on finishing
the world.
– Yves Bonnefoy (2008), translated by Mary Ann Caws (2014)
Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)