Sometimes a second pass at an image reveals an unanticipated reading or unleashes a sleeping daemon. This one is OK but undistinguished, a bit of beach with outflowing stream and modest figure in the sand:

but turn the sucker 180 degrees and crop just a bit and a whole new scene emerges, considerably more sculptural in its sensibilities:

I was immediately reminded of Rodin’s Gates of Hell, which I visited a few years ago at Stanford’s Cantor Museum. I wish I’d spent more time photographing its details, but here’s one:

The point here is a back-handed homage to Minor White’s famous dictum

One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.

And then I thought … what would happen if I inverted the repurposed image?