The overarching theme that I drew from The Nose and which inspired my photo collage is the shallowness of wealth. It is the idea that status and wealth are drawn not from skill or experience but from frivolity. Gogol emphasizes this particularly in the scene where Kovaliov speaks with his nose. His nose, which clearly has done nothing to deserve a high social ranking or authoritative position, is a higher class official than Kovaliov himself and speaks dismissively to him. The point Gogol is trying to convey is that class distinction is based upon factors that are worthless, like family connection or pomp, rather than substantial traits.

This is the idea that I worked to convey in my photo collage. The figure that we see in the original frame, standing in the ornamental ballroom, represents the upper class. Everything around him represents possession and substance, yet as we see he contains nothing on closer inspection. His concerns are only with wealth and status, as is represented by the gold coins that make up his heart. And beneath this, beneath the money and class concerns, we see nothing. Here the man, our symbol for the ‘best’ of society, is standing in a desolate wasteland with his pockets turned out. On a deeper level, he has nothing.