Sphinx - Night (Sufinkusu yoru), from the series "Europe"

The Great Sphinx of Giza, depicted at night in this 1925 print from the Europe series (which apparently extended to Egypt as well), looms as an ancient presence against a sky still holding the last traces of twilight or the first light of a rising moon. Yoshida visited Egypt during his extended travels through the Mediterranean world in the mid-1920s, and his encounter with the monuments of Giza — then still partially buried in sand, with ongoing excavations only beginning to reveal the full scale of the Sphinx — produced some of his most historically resonant architectural subjects. The nocturnal treatment transforms the already mysterious monument into something more elemental: an immense carved face emerging from darkness, its purpose and meaning amplified rather than explained by night.