CDG 1.1
Edition: 1/1
Dimensions: 20” × 30” image with a 0.8” white border
Details: Laser-exposed onto photo emulsion paper with a barium sulfate base, then hand-developed, fixed, and rinsed. Signed and dated on the back. Made to order with a 14-day production time. Shipped via FedEx Overnight with adult signature required upon delivery. Securely packaged between soft foam pillows in a 22” × 27” × 3” art box. Email notifications will be sent upon order receipt, production commencement, and shipment. The final shipping confirmation will include the FedEx Overnight tracking number.
Description:
Two women walk through the Jardin des Tuileries. One gestures mid-sentence with a cigarette; the other listens, shoulder relaxed, purse swinging lightly at her side. Behind them looms a marble monument: Le Centaure Nessus enlevant Déjanire (1892), Laurent-Honoré Marqueste’s neoclassical rendering of the abduction of Deianira. The black-and-white image captures more than a passing moment. It stages a philosophical encounter between the persistence of patriarchal myth and the fluid, mundane reality of contemporary female autonomy.
In myth, Deianira is betrayed under the guise of protection. Nessus offers to help her cross a river, then attempts to abduct her. Heracles kills him, but before dying, Nessus deceives Deianira into giving her husband a poisoned tunic. Tragedy unfolds not just through violence, but through the illusion of choice. As Victoria Wohl writes, “Greek tragedy is not simply a register of suffering but a philosophical discourse on agency and its limits” (Wohl 232). Deianira acts, but within a system designed to render her powerless. Her autonomy is both invoked and revoked.
The sculpture renders this ambiguity in stone. Nessus towers, muscular and dominant. Deianira’s twisted body is partial, exposed, and frozen—her struggle captured as submission. Yet the photograph refuses to let the statue have the last word. The women pass through the frame not as mythic counterpoints but as interruptions. Their movement, their conversation, their casual presence—all resist the stillness of marble and the myth it enshrines. Their autonomy is not declared; it is enacted.
Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity helps illuminate this contrast. In a world where inherited structures have lost stable meaning, individuals must navigate new forms of agency without the solidity of past narratives (Bauman 8). These women move through a space marked by imperial architecture and classical violence, not as victims or symbols, but as agents—fluid, unspectacular, and real.
Their motion echoes Simone de Beauvoir’s understanding of freedom as a process, not a possession. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (Beauvoir 283). Autonomy, for Beauvoir, is a becoming—a project realized through action. The women’s gestures—smoking, speaking, striding—are acts of becoming. When set against the mythological tableau, their mundane presence takes on philosophical weight. They pass through a world that once refused them space, not with defiance, but with ease.
This contrast draws attention to the ideological tension between representation and reality. In myth, Deianira is passive—an object to be taken. As P. Walcot argues, classical narratives often express “male anxiety about female independence” (Walcot 45). The presence of autonomous women in this frame directly challenges that logic. They do not confront the statue; they ignore it. Their very indifference erodes its authority.
John Berger’s observation is apt: “Men act and women appear” (Berger 47). In Marqueste’s sculpture, Nessus acts and Deianira appears. She is made to be seen. But in the photograph, the women act without spectacle. They are unposed, uncontained, and in motion. They are not watched—they are moving forward.
Photography freezes time, but it also reveals its passage. Susan Sontag calls every photograph a “memento mori”—a trace of what was, and what continues to change (Sontag 15). Here, time folds in on itself. The statue remains fixed, reiterating a myth of female passivity. The women pass through, unstilled. In that motion lies everything: the quiet erosion of old narratives, the unfolding of a new one, and the ongoing project of becoming free.
Works Cited
Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Polity Press, 2000.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by H.M. Parshley, Vintage Books, 1989.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin, 1972.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
Walcot, P. "Greek Attitudes towards Women: The Mythological Evidence." Greece & Rome, vol. 31, no. 1, 1984, pp. 43–47.
Wohl, Victoria. "A Tragic Case of Poisoning: Intention Between Tragedy and the Law." Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. 135, no. 2, 2005, pp. 227–252.
Edition: 1/1
Dimensions: 20” × 30” image with a 0.8” white border
Details: Laser-exposed onto photo emulsion paper with a barium sulfate base, then hand-developed, fixed, and rinsed. Signed and dated on the back. Made to order with a 14-day production time. Shipped via FedEx Overnight with adult signature required upon delivery. Securely packaged between soft foam pillows in a 22” × 27” × 3” art box. Email notifications will be sent upon order receipt, production commencement, and shipment. The final shipping confirmation will include the FedEx Overnight tracking number.
Description:
Two women walk through the Jardin des Tuileries. One gestures mid-sentence with a cigarette; the other listens, shoulder relaxed, purse swinging lightly at her side. Behind them looms a marble monument: Le Centaure Nessus enlevant Déjanire (1892), Laurent-Honoré Marqueste’s neoclassical rendering of the abduction of Deianira. The black-and-white image captures more than a passing moment. It stages a philosophical encounter between the persistence of patriarchal myth and the fluid, mundane reality of contemporary female autonomy.
In myth, Deianira is betrayed under the guise of protection. Nessus offers to help her cross a river, then attempts to abduct her. Heracles kills him, but before dying, Nessus deceives Deianira into giving her husband a poisoned tunic. Tragedy unfolds not just through violence, but through the illusion of choice. As Victoria Wohl writes, “Greek tragedy is not simply a register of suffering but a philosophical discourse on agency and its limits” (Wohl 232). Deianira acts, but within a system designed to render her powerless. Her autonomy is both invoked and revoked.
The sculpture renders this ambiguity in stone. Nessus towers, muscular and dominant. Deianira’s twisted body is partial, exposed, and frozen—her struggle captured as submission. Yet the photograph refuses to let the statue have the last word. The women pass through the frame not as mythic counterpoints but as interruptions. Their movement, their conversation, their casual presence—all resist the stillness of marble and the myth it enshrines. Their autonomy is not declared; it is enacted.
Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity helps illuminate this contrast. In a world where inherited structures have lost stable meaning, individuals must navigate new forms of agency without the solidity of past narratives (Bauman 8). These women move through a space marked by imperial architecture and classical violence, not as victims or symbols, but as agents—fluid, unspectacular, and real.
Their motion echoes Simone de Beauvoir’s understanding of freedom as a process, not a possession. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (Beauvoir 283). Autonomy, for Beauvoir, is a becoming—a project realized through action. The women’s gestures—smoking, speaking, striding—are acts of becoming. When set against the mythological tableau, their mundane presence takes on philosophical weight. They pass through a world that once refused them space, not with defiance, but with ease.
This contrast draws attention to the ideological tension between representation and reality. In myth, Deianira is passive—an object to be taken. As P. Walcot argues, classical narratives often express “male anxiety about female independence” (Walcot 45). The presence of autonomous women in this frame directly challenges that logic. They do not confront the statue; they ignore it. Their very indifference erodes its authority.
John Berger’s observation is apt: “Men act and women appear” (Berger 47). In Marqueste’s sculpture, Nessus acts and Deianira appears. She is made to be seen. But in the photograph, the women act without spectacle. They are unposed, uncontained, and in motion. They are not watched—they are moving forward.
Photography freezes time, but it also reveals its passage. Susan Sontag calls every photograph a “memento mori”—a trace of what was, and what continues to change (Sontag 15). Here, time folds in on itself. The statue remains fixed, reiterating a myth of female passivity. The women pass through, unstilled. In that motion lies everything: the quiet erosion of old narratives, the unfolding of a new one, and the ongoing project of becoming free.
Works Cited
Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Polity Press, 2000.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by H.M. Parshley, Vintage Books, 1989.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin, 1972.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
Walcot, P. "Greek Attitudes towards Women: The Mythological Evidence." Greece & Rome, vol. 31, no. 1, 1984, pp. 43–47.
Wohl, Victoria. "A Tragic Case of Poisoning: Intention Between Tragedy and the Law." Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. 135, no. 2, 2005, pp. 227–252.
Edition: 1/1
Dimensions: 20” × 30” image with a 0.8” white border
Details: Laser-exposed onto photo emulsion paper with a barium sulfate base, then hand-developed, fixed, and rinsed. Signed and dated on the back. Made to order with a 14-day production time. Shipped via FedEx Overnight with adult signature required upon delivery. Securely packaged between soft foam pillows in a 22” × 27” × 3” art box. Email notifications will be sent upon order receipt, production commencement, and shipment. The final shipping confirmation will include the FedEx Overnight tracking number.
Description:
Two women walk through the Jardin des Tuileries. One gestures mid-sentence with a cigarette; the other listens, shoulder relaxed, purse swinging lightly at her side. Behind them looms a marble monument: Le Centaure Nessus enlevant Déjanire (1892), Laurent-Honoré Marqueste’s neoclassical rendering of the abduction of Deianira. The black-and-white image captures more than a passing moment. It stages a philosophical encounter between the persistence of patriarchal myth and the fluid, mundane reality of contemporary female autonomy.
In myth, Deianira is betrayed under the guise of protection. Nessus offers to help her cross a river, then attempts to abduct her. Heracles kills him, but before dying, Nessus deceives Deianira into giving her husband a poisoned tunic. Tragedy unfolds not just through violence, but through the illusion of choice. As Victoria Wohl writes, “Greek tragedy is not simply a register of suffering but a philosophical discourse on agency and its limits” (Wohl 232). Deianira acts, but within a system designed to render her powerless. Her autonomy is both invoked and revoked.
The sculpture renders this ambiguity in stone. Nessus towers, muscular and dominant. Deianira’s twisted body is partial, exposed, and frozen—her struggle captured as submission. Yet the photograph refuses to let the statue have the last word. The women pass through the frame not as mythic counterpoints but as interruptions. Their movement, their conversation, their casual presence—all resist the stillness of marble and the myth it enshrines. Their autonomy is not declared; it is enacted.
Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity helps illuminate this contrast. In a world where inherited structures have lost stable meaning, individuals must navigate new forms of agency without the solidity of past narratives (Bauman 8). These women move through a space marked by imperial architecture and classical violence, not as victims or symbols, but as agents—fluid, unspectacular, and real.
Their motion echoes Simone de Beauvoir’s understanding of freedom as a process, not a possession. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (Beauvoir 283). Autonomy, for Beauvoir, is a becoming—a project realized through action. The women’s gestures—smoking, speaking, striding—are acts of becoming. When set against the mythological tableau, their mundane presence takes on philosophical weight. They pass through a world that once refused them space, not with defiance, but with ease.
This contrast draws attention to the ideological tension between representation and reality. In myth, Deianira is passive—an object to be taken. As P. Walcot argues, classical narratives often express “male anxiety about female independence” (Walcot 45). The presence of autonomous women in this frame directly challenges that logic. They do not confront the statue; they ignore it. Their very indifference erodes its authority.
John Berger’s observation is apt: “Men act and women appear” (Berger 47). In Marqueste’s sculpture, Nessus acts and Deianira appears. She is made to be seen. But in the photograph, the women act without spectacle. They are unposed, uncontained, and in motion. They are not watched—they are moving forward.
Photography freezes time, but it also reveals its passage. Susan Sontag calls every photograph a “memento mori”—a trace of what was, and what continues to change (Sontag 15). Here, time folds in on itself. The statue remains fixed, reiterating a myth of female passivity. The women pass through, unstilled. In that motion lies everything: the quiet erosion of old narratives, the unfolding of a new one, and the ongoing project of becoming free.
Works Cited
Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Polity Press, 2000.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by H.M. Parshley, Vintage Books, 1989.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin, 1972.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
Walcot, P. "Greek Attitudes towards Women: The Mythological Evidence." Greece & Rome, vol. 31, no. 1, 1984, pp. 43–47.
Wohl, Victoria. "A Tragic Case of Poisoning: Intention Between Tragedy and the Law." Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. 135, no. 2, 2005, pp. 227–252.