Ely Cathedral- A Grotesque c. 20th century

Frederick H. Evans made this print of a grotesque at Ely Cathedral sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It's a photograph, but the grey tones and grainy texture make it feel like a drawing, maybe even a charcoal sketch. There’s something so appealing about the way the light catches the rough surface of the stone, how the face emerges from the wall, both part of it and set apart. Look at the crack running down the wall to the right of the face. It’s echoed in the lines of the grotesque’s features, in the deep shadows under its brow. There's a kind of mirroring that links the human-made and the natural. It makes me think about the passage of time, and how everything changes, crumbles, and gets rebuilt in new ways. Evans was really interested in the play of light and shadow in architectural spaces. You see it in his photographs of cathedral interiors too. Think of the way the light catches the surfaces in a work by someone like Gerhard Richter, and you can see this piece as part of a longer conversation about light, texture, and time.