By Brandon Hill on January 30, 2013 • ( Leave a comment )

Europe Trip: Pompeii – Porn, Death, and Art

You are probably shaking your head at the tile of this post, and I was shaking my head when trying to figure out how to group these pictures together in one spread. The left hand side holds pictures of phallic symbols in the roads and on buildings, meant to direct international travelers to the brothels, as well as ancient paintings meant to depict the specialties of the different women. The right hand side has wonderful frescoes found in some of the homes as well as pictures of casts made from filling the holes that were left in the solid ash after bodies decomposed.

To mix this juxtaposition of carnal, sorrow and beauty I decided to focus on colors that could be used as backgrounds to unify the pictures. I chose a burgundy that matched the color of the wall in the bottom right hand corner to frame the photographs on the left hand side, and a complimentary green to border the pictures on the right hand side. The background papers are different colors of the same pattern and this helps to tie the two pages together. I used a corner cutter on the photo borders to hold the photos in place and to add some class to these sad but elegant pictures.