A scientist tells us how her field instills timefulness. By Marcia Bjornerud.

The Specials

No matter how miraculous a reflection may seem, it is always a harbinger of death. By Meghan O’Gieblyn.

Selika Lazevski exists in six photographs and nowhere else. She was a black Amazon in Belle Epoque Paris, a horsewoman without a horse. By Susanna Forrest.

Death is perhaps one of the most terrifying concepts a human being can grapple with... By Mustapha Itani.

An electronics repair company gives a compassionate farewell to mechanical pets, with a traditional ceremony held in a historic temple. By James Burch.

Laura Gibson

Hailey Tuck

A time capsule meant to teach aliens about humans could consist of math, DNA, a bot, or a brain—or something else entirely. By Stephen Wolfram.

The architect, his modernist post-War home, and the suitcase full of secrets he kept inside. By Monica Whitlock.

Dustin Farrell

Seances is an indefatigable film generating machine that deliberately creates films only to destroy them after their one and only viewing.

Once you’ve seen one cracked porcelain face with a dead-eyed pout, you’ve seen ’em all. Instead, it’s the sellers’ storytelling that provides the charge. By Katherine Carlson.

Some of these treasures are now likely destroyed, including the Ark of the Covenant, but some may still exist and be recovered — such as the crown jewels of Ireland, a 333-carat pink diamond and mysterious treasure depicted in a Dead Sea Scroll. By Owen Jarus.

In modern France, man’s uninterrupted right to his possessions, even his misplaced ones, is one of his most basic. By Nadja Spiegelman.

Humans have long struggled to describe the grandeur and beauty of icebergs.

Totality, traffic, telescopes: How ready are you for the event of the century? By Paige Blankenbuehler. (July 7, 2017)

Matisse, unsurprisingly, had strong feelings about the objects of his daily life. They delighted, inspired, or confounded him, in their humble ordinariness and in all that they evoked. These mundane items, the organizing principle for the exhilarating show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, served as sparks for Matisse’s art. By Claire Messud.

I remember when I first saw one of Frank Herfort’s photographs and thought it looked like a movie still from some iconic film that I’d somehow never seen...

On the coast, nothing is permanent. By John Nova Lomax.