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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Forty-Eight: Telling stories with pictures > World War I Monument, Cismigiu Garden, Bucharest, Romania, 2009
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23-OCT-2009

World War I Monument, Cismigiu Garden, Bucharest, Romania, 2009

This Carrara marble sculpture by Ion Jalea, depicting a dying French soldier being comforted by a loving embrace, is Romania’s tribute to the French soldiers who perished here during World War I. I zoomed in on to the faces to reveal the ravages of time on the marble and tell the story more intimately. The once pristine faces, revealing ninety years of grit, seem to imply that the battle still continues. The long 400mm focal length of my lens has turned the background of leaves and flowers into a softly focused screen resembling stained glass, adding a mournful context.

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Phil Douglis31-Aug-2012 23:16
Thanks, Maciej, for your comment. We all hope to make memorable photographs, and I am delighted that you have selected this one as one of them.
Maciej Chachulski31-Aug-2012 19:07
The capture which everyone should remember !
Phil Douglis21-Nov-2009 00:54
Thanks, Tim -- the context here proves as important to meaning as the subject. I see it as mournful, you see it as spiritual, but either way, it offers a counterpoint to the savagery of war.
Tim May20-Nov-2009 23:05
I agree that the softly focused leaves create a sense of stained glass adding a tender spiritual aspect to this image.
Phil Douglis04-Nov-2009 22:57
Thanks, Iris, for seeing what I saw expressed in this work of sculpture. I tried to distill the essence of such meaning in this intimate closeup, revealing the grit of time that symbolizes the more than 70 years of tyranny, persecution, depression, war, and revolution that have blemished Europe since the end of World War I.
Iris Maybloom (irislm)04-Nov-2009 22:27
A very touching image....loving, tender, gentle...the antithesis of war.
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