BARDO
An edition of ten numbered Portfolios and two Artist’s Proofs. Each portfolio contains twelve black and white, and three color photographs. The black and white photographs are printed on double weight, fiber based, 11" x 14" paper, sepia toned, and archivally processed. The color photographs are digital prints produced on Epson archival paper, using pigment based archival inks. Although digitally printed the color images have not been digitally manipulated. All fifteen prints are mounted in 16" x 20" mats, dated, numbered, titled and signed on verso.
List of prints:
1. Dakini, 1999
2. Flagellation, 1996
3. Red Girl, 1999 (color)
4. Straight Jacket, 1996
5. Hungry Ghost, 1995
6. Angel, 1996
7. Shaktipat, 2001
8. Blue Girl, 1999 (color)
9. Ballerina, 1998
10. Chameleon, 2000
11. Pig, 2000
12. Namaste, 1998
13. Mannequin, 2000 (color)
14. Creature, 1999
15. Dissolution, 2000
Bardo is a Tibetan word referring to the realm one’s soul passes through between the moment of death and rebirth in a new incarnation. During this journey many types of experiences are possible, recapitulations of earthly life, as well as heavens and hells. Spiritual beings can appear with unexpected assistance, and demonic figures can arrive to tempt and delude. This descent into the underworld, and the transformation resulting from the experience, is repeated in the myths and legends of many cultures. And psychologists such as Carl Jung suggest that a journey into the shadow realms of our own unconscious is necessary for full and healthy individualization.
A broader definition of bardo would include all realms that are ruled by duality, i.e. realms in which the soul has lost its awareness of its primal connection to the life force, and therefore labors under the burden of separation and alienation. Human life with its excitement and drama, and its possibility of pleasure and pain is then also a bardo. But according to Buddhists, human existence is also the most perfect opportunity to reawaken to one’s primal divinity, thereby attaining liberation from the wheel of continuous death and rebirth.