The Libyan Sybil is another of my photo haiga, created using found text. I was resting my feet on a bench in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, quietly studying Sybil’s beautiful marble foot. The image I made included the title and author card, “William Wetmore Story (1819-1895)/ The Libyan Sybil/1860: this carving,1861/Marble”. I constructed the haiku-like verse from the text on the card.
The Libyan Sybil sits contemplating the terrible fate of her people, the African people, guarding what she has written on the scroll that foretells their future. She looks out of her black eyes and sees the “coming of the day when that which is hidden … shall be revealed.” She was intended to be a symbolic condemnation of African American slavery.