Shooting Statues

I travel for work and fun and get to see amazing art all over the world.  I love oil paintings, sculptures and tapestries but struggled to find something worthwhile to do with them photographically.  Taking a picture of a sculpture for the sake of art is really a form of reproduction which complicates my outlook.  Let me explain.

As a photographer I strive to make art with my camera.  I want that art to be built on a unique perspective.  I don't want to recreate the snapshot seen around the world. I want to look at a scene in my own unique, if limited, way and capture it.

So when I look to a work of art, the challenge is how do you make a unique piece of work out of another artists work?  If I just shoot the work and reproduce it, would my work not just be a copy of their efforts?  Would my shot be beautiful because of their work?  How could anyone look critically at the photograph and get something unique from it?

My perspective change with this sculpture that I found in Tuileries Park in Paris.  As I stood looking at this sculpture it brought back my studies of Ancient Greek culture, my visit to Greece and my shear wonder for the art they created.  I wanted to capture this in some way but again did not know how to.  I took a few shots of it and left, disappointed as always when I take a picture that I am unhappy with.  I took it because I could not because it was worth taking.

That night I was thinking about this statue and my struggle to capture it when I had an idea.  Over breakfast I began playing with the idea and when I looked out I saw it very overcast and my idea took form.  I would capture this statue digitally, with a very tight frame. The overcast clouds will give me a backdrop and will almost look as if this Greek Hoplite is making his final stand against the gathering storm.  

I got very close to it and positioned myself so that the statue filled the frame.  I did not want to crop the image after taking it so I shot three different shots to ensure that the statue went from corner to corner of my frame. The clouds were perfect, I got a little low and snapped the shot. 

To be clear, the art was made by the person who carved this wonderful statue.  This no longer bothers me because everything I shoot was made by someone else and all I am offering is a different perspective.  So without taking the credit for the art, I can take credit for my perspective of it.  

This fueled my imagination, and I began looking at sculptures in a very different light.  I began to challenge myself to shoot them in a unique way.  

One of my favorite works is the Winged Victory of Samothrace but I could not find anything to do with it photographically.  I walked around it, along with 30 other people, and took a snapshot just to have it.  I then saw the stairs and decided to include it in my shot.  I waited for the number of people to drop a bit and chose my shot.  

Here I got very low to be able to shoot this statue with a backdrop of the ceiling and window arch.  I wanted enough of it to give some contrast to the image.  Both the statue and the building are works of stone and I like the contrast between them.  The same statue in a different location would not be nearly as interesting to capture.  

Here is a sculpture from Easter Island, a gift from the Chilean government to the Louvre. I liked the mood lighting that they had on it.  This was an easy capture but they had it displayed perfectly.