Mount Rushmore by odie
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No AI - This artwork was created entirely by hand or with traditional digital tools.
Description
Back "On the Road, Again" with my trip pics.
Our second day in the Black Hills was spent visiting Mount Rushmore National Memorial near Keystone, South Dakota . This monumental granite sculpture, by Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941), was carved into a mountain originally known to the Sioux Indians as Six Grandfathers. The 4 presidents are (left to right) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
There is much more to tell about how this was a sacred route for Lakota leaders and the eventual transference/control of land, etc... but I can't be sure I will tell the stories accurately. What I wrote above was found in Wikipedia. I CAN tell you that it was exhilarating and overwhelming to stand under the immense faces and look up at them.
The top photo is a typical shot of the carvings. The bottom photo is how I saw it through the colorful display of flags that represent each state.
Thanks for looking.
Blessings,
Jodie
Comments (13)
Excellent Jodes if I were American this would make me proud, as you did it proud too, nice one
I've never managed to see this in person; wonderful captures, Jodie!
Very nice work. Well captured.
I have only seen this in pictures and yours are as good as any, I like how you have framed them between the flags in the lower picture.
Stunning capture Jodie.
Beautiful Jodie!
always an impressive place... super.
So interesting to see it in context!
Stellar lighting and composition in this collage, Jodie! They'll have to get busy and add a Ronald Reagan sculpture.
Incredible joddie!!Wonderful image and excellent view!
This is fantastic, and sure brings back memories for me, I can remember our first big car trip as a family, mom and dad and four kids me the youngest driving from California to South Dakota to meet my grand father for the first time. We saw so many things on the way.. and this being one of them I would so love to go back there now. My parents took all three of my kids on a trip there a few years back and they had such a blast my dad made me a big scrapbook of their trip and it is so fun now to go back and look at all of the photos he took of him my mom and the kids.. thank for this beautiful group of photos.. Have a great day~~
I'm not in order today, lol, I'm all over the map...your text brings home the truth that even when a work of art is created at great cost to a people, it can still be a stunning thing to see simply as a visual statement. (It's just a shame that it came about from such bad western history.) Even if one doesn't give a hoot about the presidents, just as abstract art it's imposing and I imagine standing near it must make you all go, "wow!!!" The upper shot is, yes, a typical head-on shot, but it's very clear, a perfect composition with dead-on proportions. And the second shot is a wonderful symphony of verticals & horizontals & diagonals, the clarity of fore & background is uniformly fine (it looks like uniform focus, which is hard to work with but which is beautiful here), and of course your composition is your usual sensitively done...the diagonal of the heads in line with the flagpole, two flags almost framing the highest rock, the 2 right-most pillars framing Lincoln's head, etc. Native Americans could at least celebrate the beauty of your capture & its play of light & line, if not the historical perspective this comes from (of which they were at the dark end); because the shot's music transcends everything else. A beautiful visual in its own right.
a spiritual experience, I suppose, for all americans who revere their ancestors.... great shot through he flags..