Paul Mirocha's Sketchbook: A Fascination with Ruin: Photo Portfolio from Angkor

“It feels as if it’s been taken off into another plane, another world. . . . It doesn’t feel at all like destruction.”

That's what artist Andy Goldsworthy says in Rivers and Tides, as he regretfully watches the driftwood igloo he spent all day constructing, float gracefully away as the tide comes in. The igloo-like sculpture slowly begins to float, spiraling out into the deep water where it starts to come apart. The delicate structure, held together only by balance and gravity, is still beautiful as it decays.

We aren't normally aware of the dimension of time in art, or we don't want to think about it, except how to avoid it's associated degradation. The time frames involved may be beyond our comprehension; what we call forever is really just a period that won't matter to us because we or our children will not be around to see it anyways. That's long enough. But, like everything else in nature, our works will decay. And it's a good thing.

As artist Matthew Buckingham has demonstrated, in 500,000 years Mount Rushmore will again look like the "Six Grandfathers" as they did the Sioux Indians before an American sculptor carved the face of our presidents into the granite.

As our buildings and monuments erode, they tell a different story of their own. One we can't control and don't often get to see. That's left to future civilizations. There are many way to tell these stories. Andy Goldsworthy calls it the dimension of Time. There you see the workings of higher powers like wind, rain, oxidation, and gravity. The processes of the earth which will remain forever as our art and architecture comes and goes. Everything we think is true, our philosophy, science, cosmology, religion, will over time, dissolve. Or so it seems, as one walks through the ruins. That's a deeper truth and there is beauty in it. Even the earth will not remain forever as we see it now.

One can try to imagine what these temples looked like in their prime, and what the intentions of their builders were. They must have been stunning beyond imagination. Some say the monuments of Angkor were meant not only as temples, but palaces for the gods to dwell on earth. That and emblems of the power of the god-kings of the ancient Khmer civilization. But that is not the entire point.

To me, wandering alone through these sites a thousand years later, they were becoming more beautiful with time, as they slowly fall apart. Built of sandstone to a monumental scale so as to replicate the mythical mountains of the gods, the temples of Angkor still erode just like the sandstone canyons on the Southwestern US, where I live. The temples are slowly taking on natural erosional forms, losing all traces of human art. They are becoming mountains, canyons, and ridges. There is a beautiful interplay of the masculine and feminine, form and dissolution. Sometimes I felt oddly at home there as I walked through the side canyons and climbed the steep mesas and buttes of this man-made terrain.

This June I made a trip to Grand Canyon in Arizona. I have it before. But this time I was particularly entranced with the way the mesas and buttes of the canyon were eroding to look more and more like temples. Even the early explorers gave these massive formations names like Vishnu Temple, Brahma Temple, and Deva Temple. The temples are eroding into mountains and the mountains are eroding into temples.

One more personal note. Although I wandered the temples by myself, I always had Mr. Sitha, my driver, 24 years old, waiting for me at the other side. I'd climb on the back of his motorcycle and we'd be off again to a new site. The whole We spent enough time together that week to become friends. He invited me to visit his family and I met Mr. Sitha senior, his dad, who is visible suffering from tuberculosis, which is epidemic in Cambodia. TB is a tough disease to beat and it requires hospitalization in specialized medical facilities. This costs a lot of money. In this case, money is the difference between life and death.
Therefore, I will donate 100% of the profits (minus my printing expenses) from these or any of my other prints from Cambodia, to the Sitha family for their medical bills. I make all the prints myself on my Epson giclee printer with UltraChrome K3 inks on Epson Ultrasmooth Fine Art Paper. For this special edition I am printing them at 11 x 14.5 inches.
$75.00 USD plus shipping costs is my special price for an 11 x 14.5 inch print. Please contact me if you are interested in learning more.