Photography’s third floor, the brochure
Announcing pioneer artists and old
Prints of the liquid labial school –
Albumen silver, gelatin silver.
Turning a corner, you’re stopped dead
By Eugene Cuvelier: Will, in a bare
Wind-tangled tree – who knew
They were saying everything in 1860?
And by Auguste Belloc, whose sitter, unnamed,
Presents nevertheless with pride and attitude.
In ’99, Gertrude Kasebier
Speaks of attitude and self and hope,
As after her White, Modotti, Albers,
And Ilse Bing, if you can believe it, in the 30’s.
For perspective, the curators include Cygnus
By the Henry brothers, Paul and Prospere:
Star-spatter, lightyears wide,
Shot to correct our relentless spin,
No sliding lines of time trace
But points of light stock still –
Each like a faint magnesium flash
Sparked by someone looking back.
As certainly, in Cygnus there are other cities,
Sunday afternoons, Modern audiences
Individual in dress and piercings and hair,
Who with simple syntax gasp “Ooooh!”
At the early evolution of photography, a process
Demanding silver and somewhere else.