Silence

About

If you enter a Japanese garden, you enter another world in which the laws of time are suspended. The gardeners use the illusion as part of their design, convincing and seducing the viewer into an imagined space. Every little detail is consciously placed and decided. In Japan composing a garden is called the art of stone setting (ichi-date-so). Stone-setting priests introduced geomantic principles into the Japanese Gardens. Placing the stones was believed to have the power to influence the luck of local residents and even ward off evil. Laying stones, on the other hand, could bring illness and misfortune.

In the gardens, Panknin mostly photographed trees, some of which were stabilized with huge wooden supports. The image of the supports often dominated, creating a form of vulnerability. Old trees that were partially disintegrating were partially wrapped with fabric and prevented from decaying. Trees that survived the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima were marked and venerated by hemp ropes running around the trunk.

Panknin's tree and stone portraits are time containers in which time is a historical process

materialized.