La Croix Allegory of the Cave

digital / JPEG, 760×423 / collage / origin unverified / accessioned / catalogued curio

The object before the record.

FI-EPH-165 — La Croix Allegory of the Cave
FI-EPH-165 / La Croix Allegory of the Cave / source photograph 01

Evidence, relevance, and unresolved state.

Custody record

Logged 2026-09-26 / quantity 1 digital image. 1 source asset reference registered.

What is known

Found image supplied for The Shadow Zone: a painted illustration of Plato's allegory of the cave, in cutaway, with chained prisoners seated before a wall, a fire, and figures carrying objects. The shadow-play wall is overwritten with the La Croix sparkling-water logo, and a heap of fresh fruit sits on the surface above. The joke is the seltzer's famously faint "essence" of flavor: a shadow of fruit, not fruit. The brand mark is reproduced as found. Maker, origin, and date are not recorded. The exif scrub reported no location metadata to strip.

Why it remains connected

accessioned / catalogued curio. Disposition: archive. The object remains associated with The Shadow Zone.

What remains unresolved

digital / JPEG, 760×423 / collage / origin unverified. accessioned / catalogued curio. Terms marked unknown, provisional, pending, or unverified remain part of the record until evidence resolves them.

Keep the object connected.

The Shadow Zone

A holding zone for surreal found media and uncanny artifacts that surface around the archive — images with no clear origin, kept as evidence of the culture that accretes on forgotten machines.

Associated dossier / FI-PROJ-010 / open

Source Assets / 1 reference

Raw archive paths are retained for provenance and maintenance. They are not the primary object presentation.

  1. assets/ephemera/shadow-zone/fi-eph-165-la-croix-platos-cave.jpeg Open local asset