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| Lucien Aigner Coney Island Pyramid 1940 gelatin silver print Yale University Art Gallery |
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| August Sander Yew in Spring ca. 1940 gelatin silver print Phillips Collection, Washington DC |
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| Minor White Portland, Oregon 1940 gelatin silver print Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| George Platt Lynes Portrait of Paul Cadmus 1941 gelatin silver print Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
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| George Platt Lynes Paul Cadmus with a Triangle ca. 1941 gelatin silver print Indianapolis Museum of Art |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) Portrait of George Platt Lynes 1941 gelatin silver print Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) Margaret French and Paul Cadmus, Fire Island ca. 1941 gelatin silver print Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) Jared French and Margaret French, Nantucket 1946 gelatin silver print Phillips Collection, Washington DC |
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| André Kertész Untitled 1944 gelatin silver print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Barbara Morgan Valerie Bettis in Desperate Heart by Martha Graham 1944 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Cecil Beaton John Gielgud as Oberon 1945 gelatin silver print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Paul Strand Meeting House Window, New England 1945 gelatin silver print Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
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| Louis Faurer Self Portrait, 42nd Street El Station 1946 gelatin silver print Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Horst P. Horst Carmen, Face Massage, New York 1946 gelatin silver print Milwaukee Art Museum |
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| Arthur Siegel Untitled 1946 gelatin silver print Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Arthur Siegel Dry Cleaners 1946 dye transfer print Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
"The female seer will burn upon this pyre"
Sylvia Plath is setting my hair
on rollers made from orange-juice cans.
The hairdo is shaped like a pyre.
My locks are improbably long.
A pyramid of lemons somehow
balances on the rickety table
where we sit, in the rented kitchen
which smells of singed naps and bergamot.
Sylvia Plath is surprisingly adept
at rolling my unruly hair.
She knows to pull it tight.
Few words.
Her flat, American belly,
her breasts in a twin sweater set,
stack of typed poems on her desk,
envelopes stamped to go by the door,
a freshly baked poppyseed cake,
kitchen safety matches, black-eyed Susans
in a cobalt jelly jar. She speaks a word,
"immolate," then a single sentence
of prophecy. The hairdo done,
the nursery tidy, the floor swept clean
of burnt hair and bumblebee husks.
– Elizabeth Alexander (2001)