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| Marc Riboud One Policeman, Two Unemployed People, London 1954 gelatin silver print Tate Gallery |
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| Marc Riboud Vichy, France 1954 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| John Szarkowski Wainwright Building, St Louis ca. 1954 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| John Szarkowski National Farmers' Bank, Owatonna, Minnesota ca. 1954-56 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| John Deakin David Archer (bookseller and publisher) ca. 1954-55 gelatin silver print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Imogen Cunningham With Grandchildren at the Fun House 1955 gelatin silver print Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Guy Bourdin Untitled ca. 1955 gelatin silver print Tate Gallery |
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| Lucien Clergue Traveling Performers 1955 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Pirkle Jones Landscape ca. 1955 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Bob Lerner Polly Bergen, Waldorf Astoria, New York 1955 inkjet print Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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| Leon Levinstein Coney Island ca. 1955 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Wynn Bullock Fog at the Mouth of Little Sur River 1955 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Wynn Bullock Erosion 1956 gelatin silver print Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
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| Roger Mayne Teddy Boy and Girl, Petticoat Lane, Spitalfields 1956 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Frank Paulin The Strange One, Times Square 1956 gelatin silver print Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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| Elliott Erwitt Grace Kelly, New York City 1955 gelatin silver print Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
When he saw the whole Hellespont hidden by his ships, and all the shores and plains of Abydos thronged with men, Xerxes first declared himself happy, and presently fell a-weeping.
Perceiving that, his uncle Artabanus, who in the beginning had spoken his mind freely and counselled Xerxes not to march against Hellas – Artabanus, I say, marking how Xerxes wept, questioned him and said, "What a distance is there, O king, between your acts of this present and little while ago! Then you declared your happiness, and now you weep." "Ay verily," said Xerxes, "for I was moved to compassion when I considered the shortness of all human life, seeing that of all this multitude of men not one will be alive a hundred years hence." "In our life," Artabanus answered, "we have deeper sorrows to bear than that. For short as our lives are, there is no man here or elsewhere so fortunate, that he shall not be constrained, ay many a time and not once only, to wish himself dead rather than alive. Misfortunes so fall upon us and sicknesses so trouble us, that they make life to seem long for all its shortness. Thus is life so sorry a thing that death has come to be a man's most desirable refuge therefrom; the god is seen to be envious therein, after he has given us but a taste of the sweetness of living."
– Herodotus, The Histories, book VII (430 BC), translated by A.D. Godley