Hardcover, 17x23,5cm, 160 pages
Print run 500 copies
Print run 500 copies
Pierre von Kleist 2020
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When I roam alone in the intermediate states, the loved ones of this world can no longer help me. When images of emptiness arise, when the five radiant lights of pristine cognition dawn, may I recognise them as my own, without awe and without terror. And as I arrive at every place that I think of, may the bewildering fear and terror, generated by my negative past actions, not arise.
Elephant is a book of portraits done all over the world in the last twenty years combined with abstract light images and a Tibetan prayer for protection. Browsing its pages feels like going through intense airplane turbulence. The portraits manifest confusion, anxiety, a need to escape. An expression of the current incapacity to deal with our mortal condition. All this moving around, where will it lead to? We should expect more and more turbulence in the coming years. Man-made climate change has added chaos into weather patterns and made storms more violent.
Inspired by The Great Liberation by Hearing in the Intermediate States also known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
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'This book made me feel trapped and nervous'
JH Engström
JH Engström