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| French photographer Peonies 1853 albumen silver print Getty |
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| Unknown photographer Pompeii : Amphitheatre 1860 albumen silver print Getty |
"Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-line-circle must conclude and shut up all. There is no antidote against the Opium of time, which temporally considereth all things; Our fathers finde their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our Survivors."
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| Gustave Le Gray The Breaking Wave 1857 albumen silver print Getty |
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| Félix Bonfils Temple Reliefs : Karnak 1872 albumen silver print Getty |
"Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty yeers: Generations passe while some trees stand, and old Families last not three Oakes. To be read by bare inscriptions like many in Gruter, to hope for Eternity by Aenigmatical Epithetes, or first letters of our names, to be studied by Antiquaries, who we were, and have new Names given to us like many of the Mummies, are cold consolations unto the Students of perpetuity, even by everlasting Languages."
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| Eugène Atget Roses c. 1922-23 albumen silver print Getty |
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| Louis-Antoine Froissart Flood in Lyon 1856 albumen silver print Getty |
"To be content that times to come should onely know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan: disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgement of himself, who cares to subsist like Hippocrates' Patients, or Achilles' horses in Homer, under naked nominations, without deserts and noble acts, which are the balsame of our memories, the Entelechia and soul of our subsistences."
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| Alfredo Noack Statue of Girl with Carved Wreath c. 1873 albumen silver print Getty |
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| Roger Fenton Still Life 1880 albumen silver print Getty |
"To be namelesse in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, then Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the good theef, then Pilate?"
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| Gustave Le Gray Tugboat 1857 albumen silver print Getty |
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| Félix Bonfils Sphinx : Thebes 1872 albumen silver print Getty |
"But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the Epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations, and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon."
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| Adolphe Braun Flowers 1860 albumen silver print Getty |
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| Camille Silvy English Garden Fête 1864 albumen silver print Getty |
"Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, then any that stand remembered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only Chronicle."
– passages from Urn Burial by Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)
Photographs from collections at the Getty in Los Angeles.