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| Jared French Ted Starkowski ca. 1954 drawing Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Jared French Study of Model ca. 1930-40 drawing Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) Chuck Howard and Ted Starkowski 1953 gelatin silver print Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) Charles Daugherty, Paul Cadmus, Jared French 1938 gelatin silver prints mounted together Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) George Platt Lynes and Jared French - Fire Island ca. 1940 gelatin silver print Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) George Platt Lynes 1941 gelatin silver print Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) Glenway Wescott - Fire Island ca. 1940 gelatin silver print Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) Donald Windham 1938 gelatin silver prints mounted together Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) Arthur Dunne 1938 gelatin silver print Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) Arthur Dunne 1938 gelatin silver print Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| George Platt Lynes Tex Smutney and Buddy Stanley 1941 gelatin silver print National Gallery of Australia, Canberra |
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| George Platt Lynes Blanchard Kennedy 1936 gelatin silver print National Gallery of Australia, Canberra |
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| PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French) Aaron Copland rehearsing Billy the Kid 1938 gelatin silver print Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| George Platt Lynes The Firebird (Maria Tallchief and Francisco Moncion) ca. 1949 gelatin silver print Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| George Platt Lynes Balanchine's Bourée Fantastique (Tanaquil Le Clercq and Jerome Robbins) 1949 gelatin silver print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| George Platt Lynes Tanaquil Le Clercq ca. 1950 gelatin silver print Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| George Platt Lynes Tanaquil Le Clercq in Balanchine's Metamorphoses ca. 1950-51 gelatin silver print Princeton University Art Museum |
Arboretum
We had the problem of age, the problem of wishing to linger.
Not needing, anymore, even to make a contribution.
Merely wishing to linger: to be, to be here.
And to stare at things, but with no real avidity.
To browse, to purchase nothing.
But there were many of us; we took up time. We crowded out
our own children, and the children of friends. We did great damage,
meaning no harm.
We continued to plan; to fix things as they broke.
To repair, to improve. We traveled, we put in gardens.
And we continued brazenly to plant trees and perennials.
We asked so little of the world. We understood
the offense of advice, of holding forth. We checked ourselves:
we were correct, we were silent.
But we could not cure ourselves of desire, not completely.
Our hands, folded, reeked of it.
How did we do so much damage, merely sitting and watching,
strolling, on fine days, the grounds of the park, the arboretum,
or sitting on benches in front of the public library,
feeding pigeons out of a paper bag?
We were correct, and yet desire pursued us.
Like a great force, a god. And the young
were offended, their hearts
turned cold in reaction. We asked
so little of the world; small things seemed to us
immense wealth. Merely to smell once more the early roses
in the arboretum: we asked
so little, and we claimed nothing. And the young
withered nevertheless.
Or they became like the stones in the arboretum: as though
our continued existence, our asking so little for so many years, meant
we asked everything.
– Louise Glück (2001)
