Makuake

With a few silent steps, I peer up into the temple. One cannot enter but one can look – as through the narrow eye of the camera – at the sacred interior of the place. The eye takes time to adjust, the outlines of a scene emerging slowly from the gloom. Makuake in Japanese means the dawn, the rise of the curtain. Realised in Kyoto, this work is akin to a fragmentary stroll through a city where timelessness and the everyday mingle. My large format camera demands that I slow down, frame: it helps me grasp the clues of an invisible spiritual world. To reconnect in daytime with the experience of the darkness of night in Kyoto, I use a photopaper as negative. An image of the city then emerges from the shadows and its reflections. This process, with its long exposure time, allows me to assert my positioning in space and to engage in a silent conversation with what surrounds me.

link to the book