Overview
Italian photographer Giuseppe Ripa's 2005 Anima Mundi tracked the artist's 10-year photographic exploration of natural and spiritual sites around the world, reflecting on the universal impulse to the transcendant from Tibet to Guatemala and Iceland to the Sahara. This new portfolio on the Buddhist ruins of Angkor, Cambodia gives readers the feeling that they are confronting not just stones but presences. There is an intense vitality preserved in the tree roots that are sinking into these abandoned temples, and the fragments of columns that block one path seem to suggest another, all beneath the many faces of Buddha, who looks on with an enigmatic smile from stone bas reliefs. This world has kept its mystery for centuries, waiting to reveal itself to the patient visitor, one ready to wait, ready to reflect; Ripa is just such an observer.Synopsis
Italian photographer Giuseppe Ripa's 2005 Anima Mundi tracked the artist's 10-year photographic exploration of natural and spiritual sites around the world, reflecting on the universal impulse to the transcendant from Tibet to Guatemala and Iceland to the Sahara. This new portfolio on the Buddhist ruins of Angkor, Cambodia gives readers the feeling that they are confronting not just stones but presences. There is an intense vitality preserved in the tree roots that are sinking into these abandoned temples, and the fragments of columns that block one path seem to suggest another, all beneath the many faces of Buddha, who looks on with an enigmatic smile from stone bas reliefs. This world has kept its mystery for centuries, waiting to reveal itself to the patient visitor, one ready to wait, ready to reflect; Ripa is just such an observer.