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| Joel Meyerowitz Untitled 1980 dye transfer print Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
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| Robert Mapplethorpe Helen Whitney 1980 gelatin silver print Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Robert Mapplethorpe Peter Reed, New York City (Contemporary Ballet Company) 1980 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Lawrence J. Merrill New York City 1981 C-print Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Garry Winogrand Untitled 1981 gelatin silver print Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Garry Winogrand Untitled 1981 gelatin silver print Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Minette Lehmann Man: A Treatise 1981 gelatin silver prints Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Deborah Turbeville Versailles 1981 gelatin silver print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Gotfryd Bernard Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rudolf Nureyev, Paul Taylor - in Rehearsal 1981 35mm slide Library of Congress, Washington DC |
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| Duane Michals The Return of the Prodigal Son I 1982 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Duane Michals The Return of the Prodigal Son II 1982 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Duane Michals The Return of the Prodigal Son III 1982 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Duane Michals The Return of the Prodigal Son IV 1982 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Duane Michals The Return of the Prodigal Son V 1982 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Nan Goldin Brian in the Cabana, Puerto Juárez, Mexico 1982 C-print Milwaukee Art Museum |
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| Larry Fink Self and Molly 1982 gelatin silver print Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
He Posits Certain Mysteries
The body of the boy who took his flight
off the cliff at Kilchloher into the sea
was hauled up by curragh-men, out at first light
fishing mackerel in the estuary.
"No requiem or rosary" said the priest,
"nor consecrated ground for burial,"
as if the boy had flown outside the pale
of mercy or redemption or God's love.
"Forgive them, for they know not what they do,"
quoth Argyle to the corpse's people,
who heard in what he said a sort of riddle,
as if he meant their coreligionists
and not their sodden, sadly broken boy.
Either way, they took some comfort in it
and readied better than accustomed fare
of food and spirits; by their own reckoning:
the greater sin, the greater so the toll.
But Argyle refused their shilling coin
and helped them build a box and dig a grave.
"Your boy's no profligate or prodigal,"
he said, "only a wounded pilgrim like us all.
What say his leaping was a leap of faith,
into his father's beckoning embrace?"
They killed no fatted calf. They filled the hole.
– Thomas P. Lynch (2011)