Bridget Riley, Hesitate, 1964

John Thomson, Island Pagoda, 1871

Gil Scott-Heron, A Sign of the Ages

Vincent Gallo, So Sad

Yves Klein, Leap into the Void, 1960. Photographed by Harry Shunk and János (Jean) Kender

Robert Doisneau, La Gargouille de Notre Dame, Paris, 1969

William Hogarth, Gin Lane, 1753

Hiromu Kira, The Thinker, 1930

Ben McLaughlin, Anyone Awake? Series, 2012

Robert Frank, Drug Store, Detroit, 1955

Fan Ho, Hong Kong Venice, 1962

Egon Schiele, Portrait of Herbert Rainer, 1910

Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon

I knew a simple soldier boy 
Who grinned at life in empty joy, 
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, 
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum, 
With crumps and lice and lack of rum, 
He put a bullet through his brain. 
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye 
Who cheer when soldier lads march by, 
Sneak home and pray you'll never know 
The hell where youth and laughter go.

John Bulmer, Lonely Pub, Yorkshire, 1964

Salvador Dalí, Female Figure with Head of Flowers, 1937

Georg Scholz, Work is not degrading, 1921

Franz Sedlacek, Ghosts on the Tree, 1933

Desert Places by Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. 
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Hishikawa Moronobu, Beauty looking back, Edo Period, 17th century