Preview
Upload Date
10-22-2025
Department
Classics
Label Text
This image reimagines two digitally reinterpreted photographs of the same antique lion sculpture, positioned to face one another as if locked in a tense reflection. The confrontation between them emerges not from their physical form but from color, the charged, electric hues that set the two figures in contrast. The yellow lion radiates vitality and strength, while the crimson counterpart suggests blood, loss, and the violent urgency of extinction. Lions have lost nearly forty percent of their population in the last two decades, and the stark dialogue between these two versions echoes that fragile balance between survival and disappearance.
The colors themselves resist realism. Instead of natural greens and rusty reds, these glowing, almost artificial tones place the image in an otherworldly space that mirrors the unnatural conditions shaping the lion’s fate. Beneath each paw, the small sphere transforms under this lighting. Once reminiscent of a circus prop, it now reads more like a miniature globe, suggesting human dominance over nature and the precariousness of that relationship.
While the original sculpture may have been created to embody beauty, control, or majesty, this reinterpretation turns those ideals inward. Suspended against a void, the image captures a creature caught between presence and erasure, inviting reflection on what humanity chooses to preserve and what it allows to fade from the world.
Camera Settings: Aperture
f/8
Camera Settings: Shutter Speed
1/8
Camera Settings: ISO
100
Lighting
Overhead, two side
Photoshop Adjustments
Removed Background, Altered objects color to yellow and red. Objects were moved to face each other, then increased in size to fill the image.
Found in
ADC study collections