In Front of Chion-in’s Main Hall—An Elderly Couple Within the Landscape

Perhaps they were tired from the physical exertion of exploring Chion-in…
Or perhaps it was the Buddhist service being held in the main hall… even I felt that this was another dimension, another time, another way of life, so…
Perhaps its intensity had given them, so to speak, indigestion, and their fatigue had come flooding out…
This is a photograph of a modest-looking elderly white couple…
The wife, an elderly woman, was asleep with her eyes closed…
I wanted to point my camera directly at her and photograph her face with her eyes closed,
but I could not quite do that, so I decided to include them in the landscape.
December 26, 2010…
In front of the main hall at Chion-in.
