At Diocletian's Palace, Split, Croatia
As a twenty-something, I annually loaded my automobile with crackers and a backpack and cassettes, and drove west. On one of those trips, I decided to pop in on my friend Martin, who, as I barely recalled, lived at a spiritual retreat center in the mountains outside Taos, New Mexico. Really, that’s all the detail I had.
I stopped into the Taos Visitor Center and told the woman at the desk that I was looking for my friend, who “was studying to be a suma, or something like that,” at a retreat center. She smiled and suggested I visit the Lama Foundation, which sounded more like what Martin had said. So I went there. (Sufi, it was, after all).
There are many stories from that place and time, but here I want to tell you about a window.
Lama Foundation, Taos, New Mexico. Photos "courtesy" of the WWW.
In the main building there, which is dome-shaped and made from adobe, there is an octagonal window at just above floor level. When I walked into that space, I lost my breath. How could it be that I was standing in a beautiful room, so spacious and so plain, and at the same time, feel like I was flying out of it, over the Taos River Gorge, over trees and mountains, and then back in? It was a feeling of being in motion, of being in two places in one moment. When a person plays a didgideroo, they inhale and exhale at the same time. Being in that space was like being that breath.
At that time I began to appreciate the power of design and architecture. If a room is meant to provide shelter, and nothing else, then that is what you get. Some spaces do much much more.
Two from Peru.
While I am photographing life through the aperture of my lens, I often look up and see the world through another one. It may be a window, or a hole in the building, or the shape of an opening, created by the contiguous lines of the structures around me. Look up, and contemplate your place in the scheme of it all!
Can you be sure it's not a portal?!
Naoshima Island, Japan.
Korean artist Lee Ufan created this arch on Naoshima Island, Japan. Pieces like this are the best art of all, I think, because they draw people in so strongly. People play and explore, they dance and of course take endless photos. Think The Bean in Chicago, or anything by George Segal. When you are here, this is what you do, and being here takes you out of yourself.