Sea of Buddhas
(click pix to enlarge)
Gelatin print from 1995 by Tokyo/NYC-based artist and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto.
The story behind this image: these are the -rarely viewed- 1001 statues of the Sanjusangendo, a wooden temple in Kyoto containing thirty-three bays, also known as Sea of Buddha. It took seven years for Sugimoto to get permission to enter the “Hall of Thirty-Three Bays” and capture the eight-hundred-year-old “Armed Merciful Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara” figures glistening in the light of the morning sun rising, as they were meant to be viewed during the Heian Period (794-1185).
artist’s photographs on seascapes
