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| Anonymous Photographer Three House Painters ca. 1870-90 tintype Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Arnold Genthe Isadora Duncan with Dancers ca. 1917 gelatin silver print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Walker Evans Lunchroom Buddies, New York City 1931 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Charles Catermole Faust and Mephistopheles 1870 watercolor British Museum |
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| Martin Lewis Chance Meeting 1941 drypoint Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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| Günther Krampf Man and Woman Embracing ca. 1930-35 gelatin silver print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Stanley Spencer Study for Apple Gatherers ca. 1912 drawing Tate Gallery |
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| William Wilson Adam and Eve 1932 engraving Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh |
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| Johann Friedrich Waldeck after Marcantonio after Giulio Romano Illustration to accompany one of Aretino's Sonetti Lussuriosi before 1868 drawing British Museum |
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| Garry Winogrand Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, Easter Sunday, 1973 1973 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Garry Winogrand Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, Easter Sunday, 1973 1973 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Jeff Mermelstein Everyone Looking Down, New York City 1995 C-print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Peter Hujar Jackie Curtis and Lance Loud 1975 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Frank Paulin Sailor, Atlantic City, New Jersey 1956 gelatin silver print Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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| Wilhelm von Gloeden Three Youths and Fountain with Sculpture ca. 1890-1900 albumen silver print Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Anonymous British Printmaker after William Dyce Joash shoots the Arrow of the Lord's Deliverance ca. 1874 wood-engraving British Museum |
She Considers the Dimensions of Her Soul
The shape of her soul is a square.
She knows this to be the case
because she often feels its corners
pressing sharp against the bone
just under her shoulder blades
and across the wings of her hips.
At one time, when she was younger,
she had hoped that it might be a cube,
but the years have worked to dispel
this illusion of space, so that now
she understands: it is a simple plane,
a shape with surface, but no volume –
a window without a building, an eye
without a mind.
Of course, this square
does not appear on x-rays, and often,
weeks may pass when she forgets
that it exists. When she does think
to consider its purpose in her life,
she can say only that it aches with
a single mystery, for whose answer
she has long ago given up the search –
since its question is a word whose name
can never quite be asked. This yearning,
she has concluded, is the only function
of the square, repeated again and again
in each of its four matching angles,
until, with time, she is persuaded
anew that what it frames has no
interest in ever making her happy.
– Young Smith (2003)