I awoke with a panicky realization that I must catch a boat train for France in less than three hours. Laurens was gone, the room empty, the sun grandly promising the best of a fresh day, and the streets below were already humming. I stretched my toes to touch the trim reassurance of the straw matting. Its immaculate texture felt almost like a springboard. Leaving London would be leaping across a gap, drastic and final—Boston, Cambridge, all my old certainties repudiated or foresworn. For better or worse, I was abandoning Laurens and my friends. I was alone now and I knew I must find Balanchine if I was serious about anything…

—Lincoln Kirstein, from the section MEMOIR in Lincoln Kirstein: A Bibliography of Published Writings: (from Mosaic, 1994)

Cambridge, 1931, Walker Evans,
Copyright © The Walker Evans Archive,
Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York City, 1986
Copyright © Jerry L. Thompson