The Time and Timeless, Coming Together
There are few places in the world where life presents itself to you as it does in Sedona. This I can state with a certainty of a person driven for years by the insatiable desire to encounter and capture such places with my camera. I’ve often heard of the powerful energy vortexes in Sedona, where the earth seems especially alive, so I took a nice roll of film with me and set out for a couple of days of exploration on my own.
On my first day, I spent most of my morning at a place called Peace Park, an area designated for meditation and prayer and surrounded by orange canyons and green hills. Upon entering, I soon encountered a tall triangular structure, unmistakably a stupa—a Buddhist monument designed for meditation. Echoing the wisdom shared by a Tibetan lam, the entrance panel illuminates the essence of the Amithaba Stupa:
“You do not have to believe in Stupas just as you do not have to believe in the rain; it will come down naturally if there are the right conditions. So the benefit of the stupa happens quite naturally because of its structure and content. It is a manifestation of our true nature, beyond the confusion of words.”
I made my way across several trails. As I kicked the reddish sandy dirt, the sun’s rays manifested themselves, filtering through the dust. Traversing a wrung juniper tree, I ran my finger through its upward-pointing creases carved by nature. It reminded me of the flow of water and I suddenly felt a strong sense of aliveness.
I picked up my camera and looked into the viewfinder, my eyes drawn to the sculpted branches of the tree, backgrounded by silverlined clouds. After a few seconds of gazing at the small rectangle of my future image, I set my camera down. The immense landscape overwhelmed my senses, and for a brief moment, everything seemed so clear. Contemplating the essence of the stupa, my thoughts drifted to the essence of my photographs. Throughout my life as a photographer, I've sought to encapsulate the very life within a landscape. Yet, here in Sedona, this impulse immediately proved impossible.
I realized that my photographs had been conditioned by the places they encompassed, or rather by the pursuit of capturing an almost non-existent totality. Sedona helped me raise questions about the reasons behind my shots, and see how easily I get deluded by the false sense of self. I felt as if my camera and my photographs were no longer bound to the demands of my mind, but had now transformed into a powerful tool—a mirror, striving to reflect our true nature, just like the Amithaba Stupa, and even the old juniper against the cloudy sky. For the rest of my stay in Sedona, the earth continued to reflect this idea, through its silhouetted canyons, broad valleys, and the scorching winter sun. I kept pointing my camera at nature, for I believe the essence it reflects is ever-lasting in all of us.
During my final hours in Sedona, I felt as if I had finally grasped the feeling I was desperate to capture—that of life presenting itself to you. It was never about how I felt compared to my surroundings, but rather how they awoke the infinite in me. The time and the timeless, the human and the being, the finite and infinite, coming together at all times.
