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Living monuments
Living monuments Americans are used to everything being big: skyscrapers; paper cups for cola or weak coffee in ‘large’, ‘larger’ and ‘largest’ sizes; and trees of a size unrivalled anywhere in the world. As we walk amongst the giant sequoias, we suddenly feel very small and insignificant. But it is not just their enormous size…
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Death anonymous
Death anonymous A graphic photograph of intersecting lines on a white background. Simple and minimalist. What more is there to say? We find ourselves in a small, snow-covered cemetery in the mountains. The wooden cross is extremely simple. The two beams aren’t even aligned on the same plane. The crossbar is simply attached to the…
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White on white
White on white The bathtub in the snow reveals that we are here on a mountain pasture in winter. The cows are in their shed down in the valley. The marmots are hibernating in their holes underground. And the people have closed their summer chalets and have moved to their homes lower down. The virgin…
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The lonely slipper
The lonely slipper or Shiva and Parvati in a courtyard “Shiva is man and Parvati is woman; they are the causes of creation. All men have Shiva as their soul, and all women are Parvati. Shiva has the form of the male sign, the lingam, and the goddess has the form of the female sign,…
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Floating Baobab
Floating Baobab The decisive moment for this photograph didn’t come until after it had been taken. It occurred to me that it might be interesting to rotate the photograph 90° anti-clockwise, and that is what you see here. It suddenly becomes intriguing: it looks as though the tree is floating on a perfectly still surface…
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The Pachinko temple
The Pachinko temple During my walks through various neighbourhoods of Kyoto, as I made my way from one beautiful temple, garden or palace to the next, I would occasionally come across buildings like the one in the photo, and I wondered what sort of place this was and what went on inside. One afternoon, I…
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The art of tea
The art of tea Looking at the photos in each of the last four posts, I highlighted a concept that is central to Zen or – in broader terms – to traditional Japanese culture. With the photo of the display in the Tokonoma I brought the word ‘harmony’ into focus, but ‘respect’, ‘purity’, or ‘tranquillity’…
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Tranquillity
Tranquillity Zen rock gardens are oases of tranquillity. They are not intended as places we set foot in, but places we quietly contemplate from the outside. They are places for meditation, created in the precincts of Zen Buddhist temples. Ryoan-ji, the rock garden in the picture, dates from the end of the 15th century. With…
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Purity
Purity “The path is no more than a way out of this floating world – Why not wash off upon entering it the dust of impurity from our heart.” Stone wash basins like the one in the picture, containing crystal clear water, are invariably placed near the entrance of a Japanese tea room. Before participating…
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Respect
Respect Respect is an important aspect of Japanese culture. The emperor, ancient traditions, monuments, art, craftsmanship, they all deserve our deepest respect. As does the Japanese garden; this artistic creation of a highly idealized natural environment …. let’s call it paradise. A paradise that has never existed in real nature – the opposite of the…
καιρός remembered
… the right moment, position chosen, shoot …
καιρός remembered 