2010, from Autobiography, in my iPad application Horvatland
From a photographer’s point of view, the natural erosion of the stone is not always (or not necessarily) a loss: some of the sculptures that I found most fascinating were precisely the ones where the effects of time, or even the darkening of the stone by pollution, seemed to underscore a shape or to emphasize a significance. I sometimes wondered if the same pieces would have touched me as much if I had seen them in their original condition and colour. Of course the deliberate mutilations – by Protestant fanatics in the 16th century or radical revolutionaries in the 18th – do not convey the same message. Except that the iconoclasts tended to vandalise what was most meaningful to the faithful, thus leaving me to photograph more demons than saints and more monsters than virgins – which, I confess, was in line with my own preferences.
1996-1997, Pérignac, Saintonge, France, modillon (d)