Touching Stone Gallery
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA
Touching Stone - A Journey of the Mind Part I
Photography by Tim Wong
Calligraphy by Akiko Hirano
Among White Clouds
Silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
White Clouds
Ink on Japanese paper, Akiko Hirano
Inkstone
Silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
The 8th-century Chinese poet Wang Chang-ling 王昌齡 proposed that poems had Yi Jing 意境 , an invisible landscape created in the reader's mind. Likewise, pictures can evoke mental landscapes seen only in the mind of the viewer.
In this project, the mindscape begins in an ancient temple high on a misty mountain in Japan, where a calligrapher sits quietly grinding an ink stick on an inkstone. As she begins to write, her mind transforms into a shrouded figure, floating effortlessly down the long corridor on a pilgrimage to a faraway land and a time long forgotten...
"Mystic" silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
"Moutain Temple" calligraphy, Akiko Hirano
From a mountain temple
the sound of a bell struck fumblingly
vanishes in the mist
- Yosa Buson (1716-1784)
"Hidden Temple" silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
"Cold Mountain" calligraphy, Akiko Hirano
People ask the way to Cold Mountain
The road does not reach Cold Mountain
If your heart is like mine
You would get there
- Hanshan (ca. 800AD)
"Passage" silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
"Passage" calligraphy, Akiko Hirano
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
- T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
"Rustling Bamboos" silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
"Rustling Bamboos" calligraphy, Akiko Hirano
Wind rustles the bamboos
by the window
in the dusk
- Ohtomo-no Yakamochi (718-785)
"Eternal Traveler #3" silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
"Eternal Traveler #1" silver gelatin print
Tim Wong
"Eternal Traveler #2" silver gelatin print
Tim Wong
"Eternal Traveler" calligraphy, Akiko Hirano
Time is an endlessly passing traveler - Li Pai (701-762)
Months and days are eternal travelers
Passing years are travelers too - Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)
"Tori" silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
"Tranquility" silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
"Flowing Water" calligraphy, Akiko Hirano
The river flows constantly
Moreover, it's never the same water
- Kamo-no Chomei (ca.1155-1216)
"Between Heaven and Earth" silver gelatin print
Tim Wong
"Pilgrimage" silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
"Solitude" silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
"Illusion" silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
"Between Earth & Sky" calligraphy, Akiko Hirano
Floating floating about, what am I
A lone sand gull between earth and sky
- Du Fu (712-770)
"After Image" Quadriptych, Silver gelatin print, Tim Wong
"After Image" calligraphy, Ink on Japanese paper, Akiko Hirano