Les Bourgeois de Calais

I took advantage of our visit to the Rodin museum to add to a series that I started (unknowingly) thirty years ago. In 1981 I was a "year abroad" student in Paris. That year I visited the Rodin museum for the first time and someone took my picture hamming it up in front of Rodin's famous statue, The Burghers of Calais.

The latest version, September 2011. Thirty years after the first.

The original 1895 casting is located in the city of Calais. This one, cast in 1926, stands in the garden at the Rodin museum in Paris. Ken and I visited the museum in 1994 and he took a follow-up photo. Then, as in 1981, I was able to climb up onto the statue for the photo.

The time before that, in 1994. I still wear that sweatshirt.

This last time my cousin took the picture. They've since put a little moat filled with water around the statue to keep people (like me) from climbing up onto it (see the top photo). I would have climbed up on the statue anyway, but there was a serious looking guard nearby that might have chewed me out. I didn't want to take any chances of being scolded in French in front of my cousin or, worse, having my camera confiscated, so I stood on the ground in front of the statue like a good boy.

Me in 1981, the original "ham" burgher.

So there I am, ages 51, 34, and 21. A time span of thirty years. I'm almost as old as those Burghers now.