Of Clouds and Water
Water and clouds share an ability to transform light and color through reflection, absorption, diffusion, transmission. As such, they wield enormous power to affect our perceptions and emotions.
Clouds are never still. They transform themselves before our eyes. Each cloud scene presents a narrative that will change and never again exist in the same form, shape, color, light, temperature, atmosphere, texture, movement.
Water, the primary source of life, and on which clouds depend for their existence, is always poised at the edge of change. Will it become peaceful, turbulent, destructive, nourishing, reflective, salutary?
For the 14 images in this portfolio, the viewer must complete the narrative. What happens next? What would these images look like five minutes from now? or in three days? or next year?
Take for example Mekong Evensong (last image below), a peaceful, serene mountain in rural Laos, clothed in darkness because sunset has occurred. But wait - light reflecting on columnar clouds in the distance, rosy from the last rays of the sun setting behind the mountain, magically illuminates only the golden spires of the Buddhist monasteries clustered along the banks of the Mekong River. Scarcely three minutes later, all will be in darkness. But at this moment in time, in the late day silence, in seeing the golden spires, one can almost sense in the distant monasteries the sound of Buddhist monks chanting the evening prayer.
