French photographer Fabrice Fouillet photographs colossal statues around the world in his intriguing new series Colosses. Traveling to locations such as Russia, China, Japan, Ukraine, and Senegal, the photographer captures images of the monuments from a distance, shrinking the stone giants to what seem to be normal-sized figures overlooking their surroundings. The sporadic appearances of tiny people in the image draw attention to the true scale of the commemorative statues, highlighting humans’ insignificance in the face of these towering and immortalized figures.
Fouillet photographs the monuments from unique perspectives, focusing on the surrounding landscapes rather than the statues themselves. Although the massive figures have important symbolic and commemorative purposes, the photos highlight the strangeness of their existence in their surroundings. The statues, which were all built within the last century, look oddly out of place in several of their landscapes, whether it is atop an isolated hill, in the middle of a barren plain, or even behind an ordinary residential street.
The photographer says, “Although hugeness is appealing, exhilarating, or even fascinating, I was first intrigued by the human need to build gigantic declarations. Then, I asked myself how such ‘works’ could be connected to their surroundings. How can they fit in the landscapes, despite their excessive dimensions and their fundamental symbolic and traditional functions?”
