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| Anonymous photographer Family of Jane Lathrop Stanford 1840s daguerreotype Cantor Center, Stanford University |
Ancient self-glory is accustomed
To bear to light in the evil sort of men
A new self-glory and madness,
Which sometime or sometime finds
The appointed hour for its birth,
And born therewith is the Spirit, intractable, unholy, irresistible,
The reckless lust that brings black Doom upon the house,
A child that is like the parents.
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| Anonymous photographer Group of Children ca. 1850 daguerreotype Nordiska Museet, Stockholm |
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| Félix Nadar Pierrot the Photographer 1854 photographic print Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Anonymous photographer Baby with Hiding Mother ca. 1855 daguerreotype Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City |
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| C. Bernieri Caldesi & Co. Nike fragment from the Parthenon ca. 1857-59 photographic print Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous photographer Portrait of George Armstrong Custer ca. 1860 ambrotype National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC |
I only, apart from the others,
Hold that the unrighteous action
Breeds true to its kind,
Leaves its own children behind it.
But the lot of a righteous house
Is a fair offspring always.
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| George Washington Wilson Queen Victoria on Fyvie with John Brown at Balmoral 1863 carte de visite photograph National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh |
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| Peter Henry Emerson The Lone Lagoon 1895 photogravure Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Edvard Munch Rosa Meissner at the Hotel Rohn in Warnemünde 1907 photographic print Munch Museum, Oslo |
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| Edward Steichen On the Houseboat The Log Cabin 1908 color halftone Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Edward Steichen Isadora Duncan at the Parthenon 1921 gelatin silver print Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio |
So I would say there came
To the city of Troy
A notion of windless calm
Delicate adornment of riches,
Soft shooting of the eye and flower
Of desire that stings the fancy.
But swerving aside she achieved
A bitter end to her marriage,
Ill guest and ill companion,
Hurled upon Priam's sons, convoyed
By Zeus, patron of guest and host,
Dark angel dowered with tears.
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| Arthur F. Kales Pierrot Forlorn - Ted Shawn 1921 gelatin silver print Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
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| Anonymous photographer Children at outdoor puppet show in Berlin ca. 1950 photographic print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| David Moore Battersea Fun Fair, London 1951 gelatin silver print National Gallery of Australia, Canberra |
Long current among men an old saying
Runs that a man's prosperity
When grown to greatness
Comes to the birth, does not die childless –
His good luck breeds for his house
Distress that shall not be appeased.
– quoted verses are from the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, translated in 1936 by Louis MacNeice