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| Louise Dahl-Wolfe Suzy Parker by the Seine 1953 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Frank Paulin Untitled (Chicago) 1953 gelatin silver print Milwaukee Art Museum |
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| Frank Paulin Easter on Fifth Avenue, New York 1954 gelatin silver print Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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| Esther Bubley Cheltenham Ladies College 1953 gelatin silver print Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Dorothea Lange Market Day, Western Ireland 1954 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Gisèle Freund Colette 1954 gelatin silver print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Leon Levinstein Lower East Side 1954 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Leon Levinstein Man in Suit, Woman in Fur Coat 1954 gelatin silver print Cleveland Museum of Art |
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| Leon Levinstein Coney Island ca. 1954 gelatin silver print Cleveland Museum of Art |
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| Richard Avedon Paris (fashion shot) 1954 gelatin silver print Cleveland Museum of Art |
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| Maurice Broomfield Tapping a Furnace 1954 C-print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Lucien Clergue Violinist, Arles 1954 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Marc Riboud Dominican Nuns, Notre Dame de Paris 1953 gelatin silver print Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Charles Sheeler Castle Street, No. 39-41 1954 gelatin silver print Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
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| Minor White William Smith, Point Reyes, California 1953 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Minor White William Smith, Point Reyes, California 1953 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
from Little Pharma Encounters the Spine
This rope in bone broth,
tender as a leg by Watteau,
who can carry one behind
the heart and not feel she must
have plundered all this
hid museum under skin?
Lucky then to be bred
collective in ignorance of breaking,
enspecied blithe. Mercy blinked
as protein whites the fish's dimming
market-eye. Do not tell us
we live fragile. The word eats
sinkhole into bone. Mr. K.,
middle-many years of age, forbade
me speak it – when tumor
wedged alongside cord and spine
it wandered neck to floor,
unmooring dermatomes.
At first he lost
the governance of breakfast.
Then, world's slowest snowfall,
sensation to the back.
The morning he was called
to surgery found him at the bathroom
sink, attempting dance, clutching
the faucet's chrome swan neck
in sacrifice. And not to fall.
When, pre-electric, we gave birds
to gods, we must have known
a snapped neck broke a downward
power, emptied space for other
currents in descent. We also
by this gesture cut off
feeling seeping center-up.
Perhaps explaining why we never
sensed an answer.
– Laura Kolbe (2020)