THE ETERNAL STARE is photographer Roger Minick’s tribute to the sculpted heads, mostly in marble, from the Greco-Roman era. The idea for the book came about in 2012 when Minick was photographing “The Boxer” (plate #12) at the National Museum of Rome–– an amazingly realistic bronze Greek sculpture (dating to the 3rd Century) of a boxer who was sitting exhausted after a bruising fight. Minick became so moved by the expression on the statue’s face that he began looking more closely at the hundreds, if not thousands, of other sculpted heads in the museum which he had previously, and wrongly, dismissed as looking too much alike.

“Now I couldn’t stop photographing them,” writes Minick in his short essay on the project “A Word Before.” It was as if something had reached out and grabbed me, exclaiming, ‘Here, friend, take notice of me! I am significant, I have something to say, and you are the sole witness of the moment!’”

For the next several hours, and over the course of the next several days and weeks, Minick found himself wandering through the grand corridors and galleries of several European and American museums, searching out that insistent, unflagging, quixotic stare that spoke to him, not only through the centuries, but at this moment in time.