After-Ozymandias

The national debate over Confederate monuments has led many Americans to reconsider how historical figures are represented in public spaces. Monumental sculptures are typically constructed at one-third larger than life, elevated on pedestals, cast in bronze or carved from stone, and anchored firmly into the ground. These material decisions help sustain myths of permanence and immortality—yet today, many of these monuments are literally falling around us.

After-Ozymandias references Percy Shelley’s poem about the inevitable decline of empires and the vanity of their claims to greatness. “Ozymandias” is the Greek name for Pharaoh Ramesses II, who ruled Egypt in the thirteenth century. Shelley wrote the poem in 1817, shortly after the announcement that the British Museum had acquired a large fragment of Ramesses’s statue.

These photographs depict what remains after a monument collapses or is removed:empty plinths.