Naked Came I

Hope Abandoned, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This group of photos shows the figures on the top, left and right of a casting of Auguste Rodin’s famous Gates of Hell. I photographed them at night in the Cantor Sculpture Garden on the Stanford Campus. I think photographing outdoor sculpture at night is somewhat unusual—it certainly gives a different view of the subject, one that even the artist may not have seen.

The group shown in the top image is said to illustrate Dante’s exhortation from his Inferno, which the Gates of Hell illustrate: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

The 30 second exposure was lit by ambient light, the night sculpture illumination, and my LED headlamp (the green light on the lower left).

I decided to turn Adam and Eve (below) to black and white, with a slight sepia tone.

Naked Came I is a biographical novel of Rodin by David Weiss that made a great impression on me when I was much younger.