Untitled

Palazzo Barberini is one of Rome's great baroque palaces, its halls filled with centuries of accumulated art and drama. But nothing quite prepared me for the moment I turned a corner and found myself standing in front of her — La Velata, the Vestal Virgin Tuccia, carved in marble in 1743 by the Venetian sculptor Antonio Corradini and never moved from this place since. She has been here for nearly three hundred years.

I stood in front of her, working my mind around what I was looking at — Corradini's technical achievement is almost impossible to rationalize. The veil is marble, the same marble as the face beneath it, and yet it behaves like fabric, clinging and translucent, every feature of her face perfectly visible through it. But what struck me most was not the technique. It was her. The way she holds herself. The veil does not feel imposed — it feels chosen. Like a shield she has drawn around herself, deliberate and dignified, marble made soft in service of her own protection.

I photographed her from the shoulders up, in portrait — close enough to feel the intimacy of that choice. The archival giclée print is held in a large dark contemporary metal frame that surrounds the image in depth, the figure emerging from the darkness of the frame, luminous and warm — the stone alive against all that surrounding weight.

This piece is part of Bright Ruin (2025), my series of over 45 unique works shot entirely on analog film over the course of 10 days in Rome, and first exhibited at Gallery ATARAH in September 2025.