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Temple Trees

Brian Thomas

http://www.pileofprints.com/


It’s been said that the trees were God’s first alphabet, the means by which the ancient mysteries were first whispered to man.

This mini-portfolio of Khmer temple trees begins with the ascent to Wat Phu, a 1,500 year old religious site in Laos.



Fragipani trees line the steps to the temple. They drop their white blossoms on all that passes under them.



There are 4 gates to the ancient city of Angkor Thom that the tourists and the locals still pass through. There is also a fifth deserted gate, shown here, that does not lead any-where the living need to go. This is the Gate of the Dead.



Looking towards Victory Gate from atop the forested walls of Angkor Thom.



Three trees outside of Bayon, the temple at the center of Angkor Thom.



A shy groundskeeper at Preah Kahn poses before the gnarled roots of a tree that has wrapped itself around the temple walls.



The same tree, whose gnarled roots were seen in the last image, gracefully towering over the other side of that wall.



Her mother sells me a pineapple.

The temple fruit seller’s daughter swings on a jungle vine.



Beng Mealea temple has been left in the jungle’s embrace.



A thitpok tree towers over Banteay Kdei.



About taking pictures in Angkor Wat Park

Cambodia’s Angkor Wat was my Parris Island—my photographic boot camp. I was out of shape; I hadn’t photographed for longer than I care to admit here. So I started out on the 5 - 7 mile bicycle ride to the temples at 4:00AM. The pre-dawn ride over the moat and through the gate of an ancient city was beautiful and mysterious .

After my morning session I took a two hour break in a thatch roofed Khmer road-side restaurant before photographing the afternoon away. I bicycled back at dusk happy because I knew that I would sleep in the next day—getting up just in time to sip the hotel’s free breakfast coffee for two hours as I browsed my pictures from the day before.

For the same price you can buy two different kinds of Angkor Wat Park passes—one that is good for 7 days in a row or one that is good for any 7 days in a month. The latter is the way to go, especially if you’re out of shape, but plan to bicycle into the jungle, anyway.



About the photographer

Brian Thomas abandoned fine art photography of classic still lifes in the late 1980’s to make a series of multimedia presentations collectively entitled If Monks had Macs. While he was photographing for this Temple Trees portfolio The Oxford History of the Book was published with this assessment of the historical significance of Monks:

The choices in If Monks had Macs… were prophetic:… [it] not only introduced a new medium, but also set the intellectual and cultural paradoxes within which the e-book still operates.

Now Brian is developing at PileOfPrints.com an approach to digital photography that, like his earlier work, seeks to exploit the full potential of the personal computer.

www. pileofprints.com

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