ArtistStudio
View Finders
Billy
Cone’s
Black and White
City of Light
15
When in Paris, Billy Cone pounds the
sidewalks, pondering how he might
put his touch on its quintessential
monuments and landmarks.
“I mean is it just going to be another Eiffel Tower or
what?” he asks.
Cone’s Eiffel Tower is distanced by a foreground of trees.
“It’s a little eerie, at the same time it’s unique,” he says. “It
loses its scale.”
“In 1983 … a girlfriend of mine took me to La Pere
Lachaise Cemetery and I never will forget the statues I saw
there. I said to myself at that moment that I was going
to come back … and photograph this in black and white
one day. In 2002, that project
began and became a reality,”
Cone says.
“It’s phenomenal, the textures.
They’re all weathered.
That’s the whole idea. To me
the weathering, the aging of
the statuary gave it its character.
Artists did part of it,
Top: Arc de Triomphe, Paris. Above left and below: Le Pere
Lachaise cemetery, Paris. Above right: Luxembourg Gardens,
Paris. Below right: Billy Cone portrait, by Allison Potter.
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