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The Grotto Series
Images made with a hexagonal pinhole camera
Arista Ortho film, 6" x 13", 3 hour exposure time
Platinum/palladium prints

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 The Grotto Series

This grouping of statues is located in a dark, rocky, tree-surrounded grotto at the seldom visited back section of a local cemetery.  I have photographed this group many times over the years, but when I made my first (3-hour long) exposure of this series using the hexagonal 6-pinhole camera, I felt for the first time that I was enabled to express visually my feelings for the complex, timeless and mysterious quality evoked by these figures in their landscape.

The figures portray the women who came to the cave/tomb of Jesus after his crucifixion, and the angel who greeted them at the opening of the empty tomb and told them that Jesus was not there, he was risen.

Religion aside, it is the mysterious life of these statues that intrigues me: their sidelong glances, their quiet eyes seemingly full of secret knowledge, watching through generations as the seasons of earth proceed on their spiral journey through time. They emerge, pale disembodied faces, from the darkness of the grotto and hover, as if about to impart the true answers to our greatest questions:

 Who are we?
Why are we here?
 Where do we come from?
  Where are we going?


Send comments, questions and remarks to: jkapoor@jankapoor.net
Copyright Jan Kapoor.  All rights reserved.