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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Seventeen: Memories in Metal and Stone: How monuments, sculpture, and tombs express ideas. > Paradise lost, Denver, Colorado, 2007
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05-JUL-2007

Paradise lost, Denver, Colorado, 2007

I returned again and again over a three-day period to this garden behind a Denver art gallery. Each time, the light told a different story. In this image, shadows engulf the nude sculpture and its immediate surroundings. Yet the brick wall of an adjacent building turns flame red in the late evening sun. The sculpture is surrounded in lush, living greenery, yet the fiery brick wall behind it suggests the opposite. I use a vertical frame and a wideangle focal length to lead into the subject. It has come so far, and can go no further – its gesture asks for directions. But none will come.

Leica D-Lux 3
1/160s f/4.0 at 6.3mm iso100 full exif

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Phil Douglis26-Jul-2007 17:47
Thanks, Iris, for adding new insights here. She seems to be looking around for Adam. Or perhaps she is
pondering the loss of Paradise, as you note. I leave the answers to the viewer.
Iris Maybloom (irislm)26-Jul-2007 16:38
I see this as an image of longing and loss. It looks like she should be sharing that platform with someone else, but the space is empty. Her sideways glance, her outreached arm and pointed finger serve to accentuate the feeling emptiness and longing and makes one contemplate the nature of her loss. A soulmate? A child? Paradise? Another image that challenges the imagination....something you do so well, Phil.
Phil Douglis11-Jul-2007 18:44
Thanks, Mo, for your interpretation. I saw much of that myself -- this figure seems to represent the biblical story of Eve, after she was expelled from Paradise, the Garden of Eden. She stands helplessly at the end of a road as the lush greenery ends, and the hellish fiery wall begins. That's why I titled the picture "Paradise Lost."
monique jansen11-Jul-2007 14:04
I get the feeling the statue is lost and helpless, and diminutive, almost insignificant against the blazing wall, which captures her and keeps her in this green and fiery prison
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