Fabrice Fouillet captures ridiculously gigantic status in their urban settings

Statues are an eternal recognition of a person or event’s impact on society – once erected they become a symbol and a part of the community forever. What interests photographer Fabrice Fouillet is when these effigies are on a monumental scale and take over towns, becoming just as exceptional at the political or religious power they’re representing.

In his series Colosses, Paris-based Fabrice studies the landscapes that awkwardly embrace these gargantuan statues, but rather than focus on our deep-rooted need to build these commemorations, he instead questions how the memorials physically fit into the environments they’re placed in. The result is a wonderful juxtaposition of the imposing figures in regular, urban settings. Taking a detached view away from where the tourists gather, Fabrice shows the statues clumsily sitting in their contemporary surroundings, brazenly drawing our attention away from petrol stations and unashamedly poking out of trees and houses.

The massive disproportion is emphasised when humans enter the frame, looking like the crumbs from an enormous concrete sandwich in comparison. This is a fascinating look into our need to commemorate someone or something with little regard to how it may interact with the landscape we’ve shaped around us. But maybe that’s the whole point, perhaps there eventually comes a time where written tributes or verbal celebrations don’t feel enough anymore, and only the grandest of gestures on the most colossal of scales will truly communicate our remembrance.