Time Switch Series No. 11: Shaolin, archival inkjet print, edition 10, image size 14.4" h x 10.8" w, 2010
Text from accompanying artist book:
The Pagoda Forest, Shaolin Temple, China. Each brick structure contains a monk’s cremated remains. This place is on the other side of the globe from Homewood Memorial Gardens - it is as though the Homewood graves pushed downward through the planet to stretch out the other side.
The pagodas, trees and figure are so similar in form and material - in time, they will meet, and perhaps trade places.
It was very hot that July day. I was sweating heavily. My blue shirt is an emblem of my water content as I stand eye-to-eye with the monks. For now they are dry powder, but someday water will return to them, and they will take another form.
The Chinese word for “fossil” means “that which has turned to stone.” Robert Smithson wrote that the “camera is a portable tomb.” I would add that it is an active tomb - its every photograph is a fossil.