Saturday, September 27, 2025

Hard Looks

Anonymous Photographer
Sarah Bernhardt
ca. 1900
albumen silver print (cigarette card)
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Anonymous German Artist
Portrait of a Man with a Rosary
ca. 1505-1510
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Charley Toorop
Village Woman (Mother Akerboom)
1922-23
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Wilhelm Trübner
Boy with a Ruff
1871
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Julia Margaret Cameron
The Mountain Nymph - Sweet Liberty
1866
albumen silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Maria Callani
Portrait of the artist's father, Gaetano Callani
1802
oil on panel
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Anonymous Photographer
Two Girls
ca. 1865
albumen silver print (carte-de-visite)
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Anonymous Photographer
Portrait of a Girl
ca. 1855
hand-colored daguerreotype
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Oscar Björck
Portrait of Karl Nordström
1884
oil on canvas
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm

Victor Arimondi
Grace Jones, Paris
1974
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Berit Arnestad
Threats in the Night
1979
woodcut
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Yngve Baum
Arne Augustsson, sheet-metal worker
(from series, Varvsarbetare)
ca. 1973
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Anonymous French Artist
Portrait of a Man
1567
oil on panel
Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban

Anonymous British Artist
Portait of Elizabeth I
ca. 1600
oil on panel
Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford

Édouard Boubat
Self Portrait with Lella
ca. 1950-60
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Leo Holub
Coyote, Yosemite
1971
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Cassandra:  Well, now my prophecies will no longer be looking through a veil like a newly-wedded bride; rather you may expect that it will sweep down from the sunrise like a bright fresh wind, so that there will break upon the beach, so to speak, a wave of sorrow far greater than this one.  No longer will I give you information through riddles.  I want you to testify that I am following close on the scent of evils perpetrated in former times.  There is a group of singers that never leaves this house.  They sing in unison, but not pleasantly, for their words speak of evil.  Moreover, this revel-band drinks human blood, thus emboldening itself, and then remains in the house, hard to send away – the band of the house's kindred Furies.  Besetting the chambers of the house, they sing a song of the ruinous folly that first began it all, and one after another they show their abhorrence of the brother's bed that worked harm to him who defiled it.  Or am I a lying prophet, a door-knocker, a worthless blabberer?  Testify, on your oath, that you have not heard tell of, and do not know about, these old crimes of this house.

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)