Grave Stele with Family Group. 2020.
“Grave Stele with Family Group is from a series of one hundred photographs titled Cento. Since 2015, I’ve visited museums in the US, Italy, Spain, Germany, a
(...) nd Greece to photograph sculpture and artifacts from Greek and Roman antiquity. As I studied and photographed these ancient worlds, I was struck by the vivacity that their religions, architecture, and material cultures still transmit. In Grave Stele with Family Group, the sculpture projects a profound emotional dignity. This ensemble of three figures, a small section of which I photographed, calls to mind a fragment from the work of the pre-Socratic thinker Anaximander (here translated by Nietzsche): ‘Whence things have their origin, there they must also pass away . . . according to the ordinance of time.’ According to Heidegger, this is one of the oldest texts of Western philosophy.”
- James Welling
Copyright © James Welling
