It was a pleasant surprise to discover this contemporary work of sculpture lying face down in high green and purple grasses along the edge of a medieval canal. It is intended to seen from the water – where it is viewed purely as sculpture. I approached it from the landside, so I could place it within the context of nature, rich with the symbols life and vitality. My low vantage point merges the figure with the grass, and uses the canal only as secondary background. The figure does not appear to be at rest – one of its knees is bent, and a foot is raised. I see the body retreating into the earth, a metaphor for the cycle of life itself. By filling my image with swirling grasses, and making sure the tips of the grass are clearly outlined against the body, I symbolically suggest that man springs from nature and nature eventually reclaims man. I am interpreting another artist’s work, which is a symbol in itself, with my own symbolization process. I don’t know if the sculptor intended to express this idea with this sculpture or not, but all art is open to interpretation, including my own. Symbols are not fixed entities. They are a product of the human intellect and imagination, both of which are infinitely variable. Perhaps the sculptor was just depicting a resting sunbather here. Yet from my photographic perspective, it is a metaphor for man’s existence as part a natural process. An effective symbol can be appreciated in many ways, but to me it works best as a catalyst for the human imagination.