I came across this Flickr tag, collecting photos by several contributors of Josiah McElheny’s “Island Universe” series while they were on exhibition at the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid’s Parque de Retiro last year. This sculpture series is the culmination of several years of freelance modeling work I’ve done for Josiah, starting with “An End to Modernity” in 2004.
These cosmologically-derived chandeliers, photogenic to begin with, become positively breathtaking in this venue, bathed in natural light and reflecting the elegant curves of the Palacio itself, a massive glass house modeled after London’s Crystal Palace in the 1880’s and a monument to industry and modernism in its own right.