I find the first two to be a bit messy, with lines camouflaging the subject, but agree with you and others about the flowers and church. The yellow daffodils stand out nicely against the bluish background.
I also enjoy both motion blurred photos.
Not so sure about the last. I appreciate it for reasons Mike has pointed out, but then a moment later I find the composition to be too straight up and down.
April 8, 2026
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This is a delightfully surrealistic photo! The main subject is a bottle, but it is not a bottle but a stairway, or not a stairway but a reflection of one, or is it a window….
Nice one.
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I think it really is a fallen angel, because that was the title of the sculpture. However, you were spot on with the Polish sculptor! After some research, I discovered that the sculptor, Igor Mitoraj, created a series of Icarus sculptures in the 1990s, which were exhibited at Agrigento, but this Fallen Angel was created later, and was not part of that series.
The peace poster and sculpture was not a display as such. These posters were hung in many places and not just here, but I noticed that they played well together. I wanted the viewer to make up their own mind on how the sculpture and poster were linked, for instance it could be the Angel of War under a victorious Peace, or simply visually contrasting shapes, but actually I saw it the same way Roel and Minnie saw it. The angel as an Angel of Peace or our Guardian Angel next to a rather ironic proclamation of peace. The orange/pink light in the poster was no doubt meant to indicate an optimistic symbolic dawn, but could also be from the flames of war, roasting the Dove of Peace. In fact I tried to encourage that thought by using a series of selective brush filters In Lightroom and drawing random wavy lines over the poster, brightening some and darkening others leaving a poster which no longer appeared smooth, but had wrinkles resembling flames. I did it in a hurry on the iPad version of LR, so it is a bit crude.
I also liked the negative associations with the barred windows and chains, which Minnie noticed.
Originally I was going to try to clone out the many visitors wandering by, but with a little patience and a lot of luck, I managed to take a version with no people intruding. -
Here's my photo of the Icarus statue at Agrigento. Taken in 2014. I can't remember but I think I posted it to Wednesday C&C years ago.
The concept and the decision to put it at a classical site is soi close to what has been done at Pisa that I reckon Igor Mitoraj could take legal action.
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Roel prompted me to re read Pete's post. It's the same sculptor. In which case, he needs to spread his wings a little more instead of repeating the same concept.
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Thank you for these thoughtful comments.
I was indeed looking for the not so obvious angles and combinations of the actual falls with interesting sideshows.
Without even showing the falls in the actual shot (as in the photo with the Amish group), showing these quirky things in the context of a series about the falls adds extra colour and shows how these falls are a natural attraction that appeal to so many different people. -
Pete,
I like how you selected your favourite 4 of the 10 and then provided detailed comments about why these were your favourites.
This is really helpful in getting a sense of the appeal of different kinds of images.
(Yes, I also assumed these people were Amish. The was not too long after the Peter Weir movie "Witness" with Harrison Ford, that brought the Amish to the forefront of cultural consciousness. Without that movie, I would have thought these were period reenactors of some kind. What I particularly liked upon encountering these people in reality, was the elegance of their Sunday dress and the matching colours.) -
The same sculptor has apparently been very active on various historic and archeological sites in Italy (and maybe beyond).
Your comment, Mike, seems to suggest that one of the sculptures was made and placed by a copycat, but from Pete's explanation, I learned that his research told him that it was indeed the same Polish sculptor, and images of Icarus and an Angel respectively. It makes sense to display Icarus on a Roman site and an Angel near a Catholic landmark.
You both made me go back to some images that I made in 2018 in Pompeii, where several modern sculptures were also placed.
One was a sculpture of a Centaur, and at first glance it could have been a Roman original, but at second glance there were details that revealed its modern character. Another was a classic standing bronze male, but with a little window in his back showing a small second face (maybe an interpretation of Janus?) and that detail, again, made clear that it was not original but a modern intervention on the archeological site.
At the time I did not note nor investigate the author of these modern sculptures, but running my images of them through Google Lens, it becomes clear that once again our Polish friend had been allowed/commissioned to do his thing there.
So here are MY echoes:
I have several more images of each sculpture in this gallery : roelh.zenfolio.com/p456943747
Some of those others show "better angles" of the statues (more context and/or less overlap with distant columns and pillars etc), but these two show off the "picture in a frame" additions best.
Makes me wonder if also your Angel and Icarus had the same feature. -
It made me wonder too. There is definitely no “picture in a frame” on the front of the sculpture, the side I photographed, but I never walked behind it, so could not be sure. Thanks to Sherlock Google, I can now confirm there is a “picture in a frame” on the Fallen Angel.
