Looking Up

Larry Wolf, Looking Up (2025)

Young Sophocles

John Talbott Donoghue, Young Sophocles Leading the Chorus of
Victory after the Battle of Salamis (1885/cast 1911)
Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Robert Allerton

1853 - sculptor John Talbott Donoghue born in Chicago

Chicago Inter-Ocean, Monday Morning
February13, 1882 
(from the Internet Archive)

1882 - Oscar Wilde, on tour in Chicago, praised Donoghue: “more beautiful than the work of any sculptor I have seen yet, and of whom you should all be proud”

"Here is a plaque he designed for one of my poems - a figure of a girl - so simple, so powerful, so pretty. It is perfect"

John Donoghue, Plaque of Isola Wilde

1885 - Donoghue created Young Sophocles Leading the Chorus of Victory after the Battle of Salamis

1890 - Isabella Gardner acquired a bronze of Young Sophocles in Venice

John Talbott Donoghue, Young Sophocles Leading the Chorus of
Victory after the Battle of Salamis (1890)
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

1893 - Young Sophocles was exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.  Multiple biographical posts about Donoghue claim that it won a first prize however it is not listed in the awards records of the Exposition at the Chicago History Museum. There were many fans of the work (Oscar Wilde, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Robert Allerton), but not everyone liked it (see review, below).

"The Young Sophocles Leading the Chorus of Victory After the Battle of Salamis," by John Donoghue, is of the French school, adapting modern treatment to studies of the antique. It is not an attractive composition, and is in more than questionable taste. True, that after the battle of Salamis he was chosen to head the chorus of boys at the celebration of that victory; but one cannot imagine the great dramatist posing as a lad nude and with a lyre in hand. Though lads went naked on such occasions, it is not the guise or attitude that one is apt to associate with this the great master of tragedy. The figure is well enough in its way, with erect and supple carriage, head thrown back, and earnest thoughtful features; but it is not suggestive of anyone in particular, and certainly not of Sophocles, either as a youth or at any other period of his life.

The Book of the Fair by Hubert Howe Bancroft (1893)

Also intended for the Exposition was The Genius of America. The 30-foot sculpture was shipped from Rome to Brooklyn, where, according to the Boston Herald, it sat on the docks, “a huge bill for trans-shipment confronting the artist.” Left unclaimed, it was broken to pieces by dockworkers to make room for incoming shipments. 

1888 - Donoghue moved to Boston, where he exhibited his work at Horticultural Hall to great acclaim.

1903 - John Donoghue died in New York by suicide (NYTimes and Irish Boston website)

1911 - Robert Allerton gifted a casting of Young Sophocles to the Art Institute of Chicago. Allerton had spent time at the Columbian Exposition in 1893 and may have seen the sculpture there.

1917 - the Metropolitan Museum (NY) purchased a plaster cast from the Art Institute of Chicago, and ten years later, their bronze was replicated from it. 

[Wikipedia states that there’s a copy of Young Sophocles at the Honolulu Museum of Art. A search of their database finds an entry for John Talbott Donoghue, though there’s no image and no metadata. It’s possible that Robert Allerton had a copy of the sculpture in his personal collection which was donated to the HMOA.]

Canalscape

John Jacobsen, Evening Canalscape (2000-2025)

Prologue to the Present

Larry Wolf (2018)

Twists and turns seem like a direct path in retrospect. One recent (not so recent) piece of my story of how I got here, making photographs and generally creating art (photos, zines, poetry, drawing, painting) dates from 2018 and 2019.

2018 - August

Rather than give in to obsessive thoughts of a new camera, I ordered The Soul of the Camera by David duChemin. It's about the photographer.

2019 - January

I was in dialogue with Shawn Rowe about his upcoming photography class, looking to catch up on the changes in thinking about and making photographs since my last immersion in the 1970s. It's about making photographs.

2019 - September

While in DC for HIMSS Health IT week, I was transfixed by the shifting light and shadows in my hotel room and captured a series of 18 images over the course of one minute. Noticing something visually compelling. Holding a camera. In the flow. Something about that minute felt so right, so what I wanted to be doing. Without thought, I was on the other side of the decision. Be a photographer.

Larry Wolf, More Or Less Transparent - Overview Grid, September 2019

Larry Wolf,
Robert Aitken's Present 1935 (2019)

Present - The Past Is Prologue

During that September in 2019, I walked past this sculpture and inscription at the National Archives. A quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest: "What is past is prologue." The sculpture is titled "Present". I photographed that sculpture multiple times over the years. I keep circling myself. 

2021 - January

Zine making became the answer to What do I do with my photographs? Zines are what I bring with me when I meet friends for coffee, have with me for when I meet someone new, are the form I've adopted for my contact info. Again it was Shawn Rowe who was my teacher. Thank you, Shawn.

2025 - August

Larry Wolf, More or Less Transparent (2025)
Printed at Matiz Press

I reprinted More or Less Transparent as a risographed booklet. In blue because that seemed like the best of the color options. It's been growing on me. Something ethereal and dreamy in the blue, lighter than I imagined, opening more visual space for the viewer. A gentle touch of image on paper in hand. 

Memory of June 1994

Silent Running

An evening celebration

Let’s meet people 

Establish my presence

Or at least an awareness

Of them

Perhaps

Of me

Alone at a full table

They know each other

Know each other well

Years of living

Years of loving

Years of tears

And cheers

And burials

And marches

Tonight, acknowledged

For of by the all of us

All of them

I know the causes they work for

I know the forces they work against

Just not here

Had I been in Montpelier

Or Burlington

Or Saint Johnsbury

Or Brattleboro

I would have known them

All of them

Might have been on the podium handing out an award

I had to leave

Staying was killing me

Here

Alone

Lost

On edge

I flee

Way before last call

Way before awkward goodbyes and see you soons

Ripped up decades of connection

Shred my heart

Left the cool mountains

For this sweltering swamp

Alone in a hostile world 

Smothered in southern gentility

Inner rage 

Quiet street

Back stairs

Bare apartment

Hum of air conditioning

Staring out at treetops

Wishing for a thunderstorm 

Dance in the downpour

Many reasons to have left

Many reasons to have come 

Dry tears of unresolved loss

-- Larry Wolf, 31 July 2025

remembering June 1994

[Index of Poems]

Empty

 (1)

Chairs

Cups

Tea

Gone

Once

Voices

Paused

Quiet 

Glance 

Eyes

Held

Abyss

Loss

Too sad to cry

Beyond words

Space

 

(2)

Woods (chopped down)

Exotic (slave labor in a rain forest)

Local (clearcut off stolen land)

Metal (extracted from strip mines)

Space (held at great expense)

Polished (by workers, unacknowledged)

Street (cleared of all drifters)

Shadows (not enough to hide in)

Hazy (lost in memory)

Alone (with my lover)

Travelers (from afar)

Evidence (just this)

 

-- Larry Wolf, 28 July 2025

[Index of Poems]

Larry Wolf, Two Chairs (2025)

Me and Rimbaud

Larry Wolf, Arthur and Larry and Larry and Arthur (2025)

Arthur and Larry and Larry and Arthur

Many

Generations apart

Continents apart

Connected

In his web

Paul

David

Patti

Gay Sunshine chapbook - A Lover’s Cock

Collected poems and poems and poems and letters

Imaginings of Java and Abyssinia

Fragments

David made a mask

From a photograph

Friends wore it

He photographed

The mask became a pin

Souvenir from an exhibition

Rebel artists brought into the canon

I wear it

Explaining, always explaining

A zine of explanation

Grit became polished

Raw edges still present

Almost twice Arthur’s age

Almost twice David’s age

Patti recites the poems

I look over my shoulder

At sixteen

Burst on the scene

At twenty one

A last poem

Yet

A century later

Here I am

His descendant

-- Larry Wolf, 28 July 2025

[Index of Poems]

[Photo at The First Homosexuals exhibition. See also Two Bad Boy Artists and At 17 and 170.]

At a Zine Fair

Hide Seek / The ___ of ___

A glance

Catch my eye

Hold my gaze

A flash of attraction

Radiance

Shimmers

Like on sunrise

Like a bomb blast

Like a wink

Like a smile

Like me

Love me

Hold me

All of me

In this fleeting moment

A moment of 

being

of

dissolution

of

coming

of

cumming

of

small death

of

birth

of

becoming

of

this moment

an end

that is

endless

Saturday in July 2025

-- Larry Wolf, 19 July 2025

[Index of Poems]

Larry Wolf, Hide & Seek (2025)

 

Larry Wolf, Hide Seek (2025)

Larry Wolf, Hide Seek (2025)

Perfectly Imperfect

Reflections in the Windows

Larry Wolf, Gustave in Chicago (2025)

Larry Wolf, Gustave in Chicago (2025)

Larry Wolf, Gustave in Chicago (2025)

Larry Wolf, Gustave in Chicago (2025)

Larry Wolf, Gustave in Chicago (2025)

Larry Wolf, Gustave in Chicago (2025)

Larry Wolf, Gustave in Chicago (2025)

As part of the Gustave Caillebotte exhibition, The Art Institute asked artists to make works at the "intersection of Art and Commerce in the City of Chicago". These by photographer Brad Danner are a wonderful combination of the Caillebotte paintings, current photos in Chicago and a lively imagination, plus my enjoyment in the reflections in the windows at the Berghoff restaurant. 

Noah, Not Seen, Not Invited

"I had a friend once," he said, so soft it came out as a whisper. He waited a long while, then, "We can call him Noah." He listened to the name leaving his mouth. 

Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness, Page 314

Hai rose and brushed himself off ... and made a beeline toward his bike. Fingers shaking, he zipped up his UPS jacket, the same jacket he had found hanging from a nail in Noah's barn the day of his funeral, having ridden his bike through mud-frosted roads to get there. Because Hai was not invited to see the coffin. Because to Noah's family he never existed. He was locked inside the head of the cold boy in the pine box.

Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness, page 319

The night he returned from New York ...  How could he have told her then that he had dropped out because Noah had overdosed, like nearly a dozen kids from his high school class, on a bad batch of fent-dope, and that a boy whose face she'd never seen had become the boy whose face he couldn't forget?

Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness, page 190

He went over to where his jacket hung and ran a finger down its arm, his attention lingering on the stitching. The jacket once belonged to his friend Noah, a boy he met working tobacco when he was fourteen, the crop blooming verdant along the river that carved East Gladness in half. His real name wasn't Noah, but that's what Hai started calling him a week after he died. Because why shouldn't the dead receive new names? Weren't they transformed, after all, into a kind of otherhood? Like many boys throughout the county, the wide green valley swallowed Noah up and spat out a tombstone the height of a shoebox at Cedar Hill, high enough to hold his name and nothing else. It was one of those friendships that came on quick, like the heat on a July day, and long after midnight you could still feel its sticky film on your skin as you lie awake in your room, the fan blowing in what remained of the scorched hours, and realize for the first time in your peep of a life that no one is ever truly alone. It'd been two years since Noah's pine box was hammered shut, and nearly every day since, the UPS jacket draped over Hai's bony shoulders, sometimes even in bed on especially cold nights, the leather torn in places and the U nearly peeled off. But skin is skin, he told himself, even when it's not yours.

Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness, pages 19-20

The Past Enters the Present

Larry Wolf, Considering Gustave (2025)

The artist goes for a walk

His dog comes along, perhaps there's a treat in a pocket

They're larger than life in this photograph

Made by the artist's brother, perhaps a staged moment of their everyday life

One hundred and forty years ago.

In this moment, my now

A grand exhibit in a grand museum

A patron of the arts who was himself an artist

Celebrated though we know little and speculate a lot

Who was this man who went for a walk on a cobblestone street?

A twenty-first century photographer frames this

A patron leaving the gallery

A guard leaning on the wall

The exit doors open

A pause before we continue with our everyday lives.

-- Larry Wolf, 10/23 July 2025

[Index of Poems]

State of Mind

Larry Wolf, Foggy Chicago (2025)

Chapbook Mockup

Larry Wolf, Louisville Poems Chapbook (2025)

Louisville Poems, 1994 - 1996, originally posted to thepoint.net, now on this blog and a 1-of-1 chapbook.

[Index of Poems]

Too Much

Don’t be too adorable, it gets your cheek pinched

Don’t be so sensitive, you cry baby

Don’t be too smart, kids will throw rocks at you

Don’t have a flashy bike, someone will take it at knife point

Don’t fight for your stuff, you’ll only get hurt

Don’t pin a towel around your neck as a cape, who do you think you are? Superman?

Don’t be too Bronx, people will make fun of how you speak

Don’t use big words, people will think you’re trying to impress and don’t know what you’re talking about

Don’t be teacher’s pet, you suck up!

Don’t hum while you’re working, if you do, be on key

Don’t be fat, kids in Europe are starving

Don’t be too Jewish, millions were exterminated

You don’t even know how to be Jewish, not like cousin Marty, he goes to yeshiva

Don’t be an ugly American, you klutz

Don’t be too powerful, leaders get stabbed in the back

Don’t be so accommodating, they’re taking advantage of you

Don’t be too gay, Jim is awfully effeminate

Don’t be too flirty, your lingering look will get you punched in the face

Let that be a lesson to you.

-- Larry Wolf, 2 July 2025

[Index of Poems] 

Holding You

Devil’s Rope, Laramie, 1998 

October 

A chill breeze comes off the Rockies

My ruddy wires cast shadows from the warrior moon

A quiet night

A truck pulls up

You and two others stagger out

They tower over you

Push you

Threaten you

Growl

FAGGOT

ON YOUR KNEES

Your face at their crotches

You plead

They pull out their

Gun 

Raise it

Bash the butt 

Into your head

your head

your head

You crumple

They drag you, toss you

Onto me

I sag, hold your unconscious weight

Doors slam

Engine starts

Tires spin up dirt

They’re gone

We’re alone

Your arms thrown backwards over me

My taut wire cuts into your armpits

barbs tear your shirt and skin

Your head hangs listless

Your breath

Rough

Ragged

Irregular

Shivering

Shaking

Convulsing

Your spasms pulse through me

Then 

Still

Limp 

Seeping blood

Cold night

I can offer 

No help

No warmth

Only presence

In the faintest dawn

A passing runner, pauses, wonders

Is that a scarecrow?

Sees it is a boy

Goes for help

Sirens

Police

Flashing lights

Ambulance

Useless

We’re entangled 

I quiver as you're lifted

Carried away

Clinging to life

Bits of your clothes

flesh

blood

On me, left behind

Cars arrive

Candles

A vigil

Days and nights

A stream of mourners

River of mourners

Flood of mourners

Months pass

Still they come

We spent a night together

Your last night out

Out 

Under the vast sky you loved so much

Matthew Shepard

Matthew Shepard

Matthew Shepard

-- Larry Wolf, 30 June 2025

[Index of Poems]

Larry Wolf, Held (Zine Photo 2025/Fence Photo 2010)

An earlier version of this poem was read at Maine Media Workshops on June 27, 2025, at the conclusion of The Photographic Poem with Richard Blanco.

The above photo is of my zine Rough Raw Reclaimed (2021). The text, on the inside of the zine, reads:

Tear Streaked Cheeks

On a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming, a man was beaten and left to die on a cold October night, 1998. Matthew Shepard became the poster child of gay hate crimes. There were candlelight vigils – organized all too quickly and too well. We should not be so good at this public mourning and outcry. Enough is enough. 

The trial. The protestors chanting hell for the homosexual. The angelic counter-protests. His parents. Their compassion. Their determination. The plays, art, chorale works and politics that followed.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act became law in 2009. Two brutal deaths in 1998, one homophobic, one racist. A decade. Another decade. Much still to do.

 

An Earlier View from the Fence

Jeff Sheng's MFA Thesis Exhibition included a large forty foot wide by six foot high digitally constructed panoramic photographic installation, titled "Where Matthew Lay Dying: Laramie, Wyoming," originally shot and taken from the spot and vantage point where the hate crime/murder victim Matthew Shepard was found on a fence post outside Laramie, Wyoming. 

[Wikipedia Entry for Jeff Sheng]

Rockport Rugosa etc

Larry Wolf, etc - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Rugosa - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Rugosa - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Rugosa - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Tree with House - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Tree with Lichen - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Seeds - Rockport Maine (2025)

Rockport Harbor Photo Album

Larry Wolf, Hemingway - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Self-Portrait - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Working Lobster Boat - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Boat Launch Approach - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Zip Tied Infrastructure - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Shadow and Stairs - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Lime Kiln - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Lime Kiln - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Thorny Beauty

Portrait of a Shipwrecked Invader 

Shades of green with pops of white 

A tightly wrapped bud with a blush of pink

A pure white whorl of petals glows in the morning light

A star of sepals surrounds a wiry ring of spent stamen around the ovary incubating seeds.

Survivor of salt spray and freezing winters

Impassable thickets of rugosa spread from underground runners

 - Armoring spikes protect tender shoots and a stockade of stalks 

Hips dense with seeds nourish animals who further spread the robustly prolific plant.

A schooner filled with horticultural oddities floundered and its cargo fell into the ocean

Scrawny and scraggly, the specimens broke free of their crates and settled in the sand, sent out scouts, secured a beachhead, largely unnoticed

Rooted deeply in the land, gone native, crossbreed, flourished

A new participant shifted the ecology.

-- Larry Wolf, 26 June/7 July 2025

[Index of Poems]

Larry Wolf, Thorny Beauty (2025)

Family

Sonya at Sixteen

Surrounded - Heshel, Miriam, Ruthie, Harold, Abe -

no Anita

headaches, dizzy, bewildered, dead

just before Pesach

we moved on

like always

running 

running from

Europe

North Atlantic

vast Canada

Brooklyn

enough already

Observant, keeping the old ways, though papa keeps his yarmulke under his hat

Ruthie and I navigate - Yiddish, Russian, English - their guides in this new world

I’m ready to break out and find my way

observant of me

still I see Benji

he helped me pick out this coat

stylish

mama says I’m too ready to leave 

I should take my time

Time! 

Anita was so vibrant - now gone

shvester I miss you

We are gathered before the camera

smile but don’t smile

relax but not too much

show the people in Kyiv we’ve arrived

we have warm coats

shined shoes (well, not papa)

a professional photographer

Ruthie is ready to dance

I just want this to be over.

-- Larry Wolf, 24 June 2025

[Index of Poems]

Unknown Photographer,
My Great Grandparents and their Children (1917?)

Written at Richard Blanco's The Photographic Poem at Maine Media Workshops and College

In a Mirror - 2025

Larry Wolf, Photographer (2025)

In a Mirror - 1978

Larry Wolf, Photographer (1978)

Me and Coffee

Larry Wolf, Micro Espresso Montreal (2025)

Three times during our visit to Montreal to sip espresso at the counter, to buy some dark roast Brazilian beans to bring home. Savoring that coffee now. 

Micro Espresso

Yesterday they were fire bombed. I'm devastated even at this distance. Humans sowing chaos. And rebuilding. Otherwise moving on. Us and all our addictions, all our love. Alive in our memories, living as phoenix, death and birth in flames.

Ink and Water, Again

Larry Wolf, Body as Landscape (2025)