The question is, did she stand on that stretch of empty sidewalk watching it burn, or did she happen to stroll by just after the last flame had died out? Either way, the armchair must have been on fire moments before for her to get that one small white plume of smoke rising from its blackened frame. It’s easy to forget there aren’t people in this picture. Looking at the ruins of that upholstered chair feels like looking at a body, with the scraps of charred fabric scattered on the sidewalk like spatters of blood.

PATRICIA STOKES: By the end of that summer, I’d had it up to here. An apartment with a lavatory I couldn’t use, a roommate who never wanted to go out or even cook a simple meal—well, that wasn’t what I’d signed up for. Lilly’s photographs were her real roommates; I was just there to pay half the rent. Then, all of a sudden, Lilly stopped working on her photos. Whenever I was home, she was in her bedroom with the door closed, and it was quiet as church. I figured it was something to do with her soldier, and that if he was dead she would have mentioned it, so I could only assume he was dead to her. Of course I felt bad for her, but I was also just a teensy bit glad to know that not everything always turned up roses for the artistic geniuses of the world. Finally I knocked on her bedroom door. At first I heard nothing. Then I heard the creak of footsteps walking across the floorboards. Next the doorknob turned, and there was Lilly with such dark circles under her eyes that she could have passed for the love child of Peter Lorre. Oh Patty, she said in a quavery voice that I’d never heard before. Sitting on the living room couch, she wept on my shoulder with heaving sobs. As I stroked her hair and patted her arm, I realized the price for Lilly’s immense talent was an immense loneliness that I would never have to know.

13. Cynthia Ravitt, New York, 1953

Lillian kept this one in a manila folder beside her copy of Ravitt’s Methods for Better Photography. She only took it out if she really liked someone. Whenever she showed it, she’d explain in a naughty whisper that Ravitt never knew she was taking it. Then she’d giggle like a kid sneaking a piece of candy.

It’s another spider shot. You can tell by how it’s framed that Lillian set herself outside the New School and waited for Ravitt to come out. What makes it is how Ravitt leans forward as she walks past the building’s facade, totally screwing with all its horizontal lines.