Digital Photo Gallery of Ted Szukalski
Fine art digital photography, photographic news, reviews, articles and resources.

Man and an anchor sculpture

There is an anchor sculpture next to the Sydney Town Hall building. This man stood in front of it for a considerable amount of time studding it very carefully. The sculpture is quite simple and rather “ordinary” and yet he took quite an interest in it. After few minutes of looking at it he took a camera out and took what seemed to be a single photograph. Perhaps he was an art student on an assignment.

While he was studying the sculpture I had to be patient to get a clear photograph of him as this is rather busy place with many pedestrians. I was rather lucky as this was a cloudy, overcast day and the light conditions were less then favourable for photography but then in time some light got through the cloud cover and illuminated his face and the tip of the anchor.

Luzerne, Switzerland 102_0762.jpg

helvetiorum fidei ac virtuti
As I look at this moving photograph of a sculpture of dying lion in Luzerne all I can think of is a scene from a gift shop I witnessed, where an American tourist was purchasing a T-shirt. She liked one particular design but was really annoyed with the wording underneath, which did not say Swiss or Switzerland but only had letters CH. She was arguing with the shop attendant that since they are Swiss that is what they should put on these T-Shirts and not something totally unrelated.

To everyone’s amusement the national pride took better of the sales person, who politely but very decisively said the letters CH stand for Confoederatio Helvetica (Swiss Confederation), which has existed since 13th century, long before any one from USA could come and ask for silly T-shirts. Remorseful and ashamed tourist bought the T-shirt and left quietly.

“Bertel Thorvaldsen’s famous carving of a dying lion (the Lion Monument, or Löwendenkmal) is found in a small park just off Lowenplatz. The carving commemorates the hundreds of Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution, when the mob stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris.” - source: Wikipedia