Caves, unusual rocks, rivers, starcapes: in the Shinto/Zen cosmology these natural phenomena are frequently considered kami, a term signifying the generative energy, or sacred essence, that resides in such objects or places and inspires a divine sense of wonder in the beholder. 

 

Conceived around the question of what happens after death, this project offers a subtle exploration of eastern belief systems addressing notions of transcendence, the images suggesting pathways to the infinite, a journey from the secular to the sacred.

 

While the flat plane of the pictoral surface has been accepted throughout the series as its primary frame of reference, the spaces within it create an environment that does not conform to any assumed dimensionality. The semblance of foreground, middleground, or background has either largely been eliminated or acts in a unique re-assemblage of the three that is authentic to the photographic object itself.

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Culled from nearly a thousand photographs taken in an ancient Japanese graveyard, the resultant images were altered in the printing process by hand, re-photographed, digitally adjusted and printed again, creating deep layers and intermediate spaces that act as markers of transfiguration.