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| Arthur Tress Boy in Flood Dream, Ocean City 1971 gelatin silver print Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Jonas Dovydenas Politicians, St Patrick's Day Parade, State Street, Chicago 1972 gelatin silver print Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| William Eggleston Red Ceiling, Greenwood, Mississippi 1973 dye transfer print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Lee Friedlander Urn with Chrysanthemums, Luxembourg Gardens, Paris 1972 gelatin silver print Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Nancy Hellebrand Londoners: Self-Employed Decorator 1973 gelatin silver print Cleveland Museum of Art |
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| Ruth Levy Francesa Corkle and Robert Talmage in Beau Danube (Joffrey Ballet), Chicago 1973 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Bill Owens Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and Friday I Get My Hair Done ca. 1972 gelatin silver print Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
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| David Husom Flat-Iron for Alfred Stieglitz 1973 gelatin silver print Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Henry Wessel San Francisco, California 1973 gelatin silver print Milwaukee Art Museum |
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| Lynne Cohen American Legion, Monroe, Michigan 1972 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Lynne Cohen Real Estate, Ann Arbor ca. 1972 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Jim Dow Stamped Tin House US 63, Freeburg, Missouri 1973 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Jim Dow Diner Detail US 22, White House, NJ 1973 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Gilles Peress St Paul's Church, Falls Road, Belfast 1972 gelatin silver print Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| William Christenberry Green Warehouse, Newbern, Alabama 1973 C-print Cleveland Museum of Art |
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| Eliot Porter Iceland 1972 dye transfer print Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
A Simple Purchase
Buying flowers
lowers
panic levels
as bevels
in mirrors
reduce terrors
by taking
images
and breaking
their edges:
freely
buds of peonies
burst from stems
beyond the whims
of the devil.
Flowers are not evil,
though they make belief
in evil easy:
they're so beautiful
that God must be ugly.
They're not in His image,
but what He wants to be.
He sets as His wage
what He wants to see,
for He is cancerous,
crippled,
leperous,
and pulled
toward terror.
God must be error
incarnate!
How else can we account
for evil and still mount
our belief? Hate
must be His state.
Our damage
isn't in God's eye,
but God's eye.
It's His image,
the one He creates in,
a state of sin.
Thus the terror around us
surrounds us
because it is God.
Here I thought He was good.
He can barely lift
His scaled hand
to His bulbous forehead
or, for the sores, shift
from side to side.
Not to hide
what He is, but
to gain what
He would be,
He must make beauty,
just as we hope
to change – and grope
toward form in our lives,
even if only the rhymes
of our mistakes survive.
Thus all is pattern.
The continual figure
of a leaf
is the flower
of error and belief
in the world's faults
which are God's faults:
horror
in order.
– Molly Peacock (1987)