A high school or college student wearing a graduation gown complete with mortar board and tassel embraces a white globe. The work is allegorical in nature-the photograph symbolizing how the entire world is now in reach due to the student’s successful completion of a diploma or degree program.

Although this could have been done as an advertisement for a school or yearbook, the pictorial representation of glass globes or orbs such as this example have a long history in pictorial photography.  Photographers such as Anne Brigman, Fred Holland Day and Clarence White would sometimes feature this object as a stand-in for the earth itself, or as a symbol of prophesy (divination) or of religious ideals.

“Gazing” globes, made from blown glass, have been around for centuries, and are still seen today-often mounted atop pedestals-where they are used in decorative landscape settings such as gardens. Hand-blown, clear glass globes- this is a translucent globe-were first manufactured as fishing floats in Norway around 1840.