The Rossio Square is to Lisbon what Trafalgar Square is to London. It is the nerve center of the city. The square is home to the Rossio Rail Station, the National Theatre, two huge fountains with multiple sculptures, and a towering column topped by a figure of Dom Pedro IV, the fist emperor of independent Brazil. There are far too many monuments for ten pictures, let alone one. I chose one small statue to sum up the grandeur of the place – an angelic water nymph in one of the squares massive fountains. This image is intimate, rather than all encompassing. Her eyes are lifelike, and gaze intense. Yet this image is also incongruous. Instead of flesh, we see calcium stained metal on her face and chest, at odds with the smooth classical beauty of her features. I position the hands and arm of the sculpture in the lower right hand corner, tilting the camera so that the head flows into the upper left hand corner, creating diagonal tension and energy. My goal is to express the beauty and flamboyance of another time, because that is exactly what Lisbon’s Rossio Square is all about. By choosing part of just one monument to represent all of them, I make use of abstraction to best tell this story.