Given to France by the Ottoman Khedive of Egypt, the 3300 year old Luxor Obelisk stands tall in the Place de la Concorde brimming with it’s own history and artfully covering up the history of the Place itself.
The Place de la Concorde once had a different name: the Place de la Revolution. And the spot now taken by the obelisk had hosted the famed gallows of the revolution. This is the spot where Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and Louis XVI were killed. Their heads removed by the remorseless blade in front of approving, sometimes cheering crowds. The famous were not the only ones to fear the National Razor, perhaps as many as 40,000 people died - not all in the gallows - in the two years of the Reign of Terror including 1300 in one month in the very spot you are looking at now.
Of course, this plaza was not innocent before the arrival of the revolution. It was the Place de Grève and this was the spot for the bourgeoisie to watch the torture and executions of criminals and opponents no doubt fostering some of the resentment that lead to the revolution.
Once again, blood is used to wash away blood.
I used damn near the whole kit on this one: Camera Bag, Mill Colour, Photo fx, Best Camera, Pro HDR, Pastebot and PS Mobile (which now has sharpening). Why use all of them? Well, I wanted to separate the sky from the clouds which, in (real) Photoshop is easy: just use channels to get the B&W contrast right but on the phone I had to do some gymnastics with Mill Colour and Photo fx to get the contrast. Blended the HDR images, filtered with the other filter apps, cropped with pastebot and sharpened with PS mobile. Whew.
Le Penseur. Originally called The Poet, this statue represents Dante and first appeared, much smaller, in Rodin’s brilliant The Gates of Hell. In Rodin’s own words: he is not a dreamer; he is a creator.
He now sits in the Musée Rodin; a fantastic museum in the heart of Paris. One thing that I learned about myself on that trip is that the thought of seeing famous sculpures really excited me — David, in Florence; The Thinker, in Paris; Aphrodite of Milos, in the Louvre. I was not disappointed.
I stood, feeling small in front of these iconic works, stunned, awed. Knowing of them my entire life, I now knew them. It was significant and profound.
I used both Mill Colour and the image filters in Pastebot to desaturate and add contrast to this photo.
Standing at Checkpoint Charlie, I couldn’t help thinking what a nightmare it must have been to have survived WWII and then to be stuck on the wrong side of Berlin. That’s where I took this photo from — the wrong side, the east side. How excruciating, to go from the certainty of death to the torture of a captive life.
Now, though, it is easy to find those young enough to have never known a divided city and it felt strange for me to be able to cross the inset line of bricks that mark where the wall once was with ease. It felt as though I should be able to feel the pain of that horrible division, that it should be darker on the east side — if only by a little bit — but there was nothing. No feeling at all.
Time goes on, the past is the past. Only the future is important.
B&W and contrast with Mill Colour, HDR with Pro HDR, cropping with Pastebot.
