Bestor Plaza honors the memory of Arthur Bestor, who served as the president of the Chautauqua Institute from 1915 to 1944. This fountain, which stands in the center of the plaza, was installed two years after his death. A four-sided column in the center of the fountain displays four bas-relief panels symbolizing the primary fields of study at Chautauqua: religion, knowledge, art, and music. I moved around the entire fountain to study the effect of light and shadow – photographing the panels individually and in pairings. This pairing, which compares the shadowy figure of “music”
to the powerfully defined symbol of “knowledge,” allowed me to make the most out of the play of light. I chose to render the image in black and white because it eliminates the distracting green foliage in the background, and allows us to concentrate on the idea I am expressing here – music as a subtle but essential component of knowledge itself.