Paris and I ~ 'Turn To Stone'

iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ Turn To Stone ~

Have any of you actually counted the number of times you've seen a head of some sort represented in metal or stone in this chosen city of ours? My guess is that it would be an impressive statistic. Look, this first picture's got at least six in the blink of an eye. Know where it is, by the way? Just a question.

But here's another question. Who are all these faces, looking down on, or sometimes up at the passing human traffic and metal monsters which wouldn't even have existed when most of they them were created. Are they well-known public figures? Figments of a lonely sculptor's imagination? Or perhaps simply based on family and friends because we need a head in this corner here, and it doesn't really matter whose it is.

And then there's a final, perhaps more profound question than all the others put together. Why do we have this obsessive need to plaster endless effigies of our own fleeting existence all over the place in far harder wearing and longer lasting materials than tender flesh and bone?

Could it be that we are trying to kid ourselves on that we are immortal? That if we produce our own images in impassive iron or marble maybe, just perhaps we'll dupe the devil and carry on. Forever. And ever amen. Except that it doesn't quite work that way.

Splendid proud copper figures inevitably turn a lurid fluorescent green; envious pigeons deposit pernicious crappy tears which eat away at even the most stoic stone complexion; and the gentle breeze imperceptably peels away the years from our commutative facades until we crumble...

Have any of you actually counted the number of times you've seen a head of some sort represented in flesh or bone in this chosen city of ours? My guess is that it would be an impressive statistic. Look, this second picture's got at least one way up high. Know who it is, by the way? Just a question.

(A Paris iPhone street photograph by Sab Will for the 'Paris and I' photo blog)

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