Toksho-Ji, Portrait of a Kyoto Temple 'Toksho-Ji, Portrait of a Kyoto Temple', is a selection from a portfolio of black and white portraits of the rooms, hallways and gardens of Toksho-Ji, a Japanese Buddhist temple and private residence, located on a side street off a busy avenue in central Kyoto, Japan. The architecture and flow of space of this temple can be experienced as initiatic, as all movements within it wake-up a union of body senses, breathing rhythm, mind and spiritual alertness Rooms with changing and discreet entrances, silently sliding shoji screens, the generations-old patina of the wood floors, gardens with ceremonial gates and meditative stone paths, all inviting one to look for traces, stories and memories in the depth of their surfaces. The shine of gold leaf motifs in the shadows, a monograph of Hans Bellmer on a shelf next to a plaster bust of the 17th century French playwright Moliere, Color Field artist Kenneth Noland's catalogue raisone flipped on its side in the library room, a stray cat's stare in the South garden in the noon sunlight, all of theses bring about inner voyages. Toksho-Ji is like a book-labyrinth, as if it were simultaneously a deja-vu and a premonition of a future dream, turning and flipping culture/space/time like a Möbius strip. Some of the photographs were created during the rainy season of June, in the days leading to the summer solstice. The light was soft...and dark and secret at times, the photographic exposures would last hours in the more shadowed of the spaces, I used this time to be in harmony with the past and present of Toksho-Ji. Echoing the maze-like playfulness of Toksho-Ji, it was photographed with a reserved stock of expired (March 2007) Polaroid type 665, a 3 ¼ “ x 4 ¼” black and white negative film, which has the potential to solorize at the time of the camera exposure. Solorization is an unpredictable chemical reaction that reverses some of the tonalities in the shadows thus giving them an inner light. This solarization cannot be planned but only hoped for and this 'chance-event' then becomes a portal to imagine another materiality of space and time. Toksho-Ji is a place of the sacred where light and time can be experienced in their ephemerality and infinity. This portfolio was photographed during 5 sessions starting on March 2009, then June 2010, October 2015, January 2016 and finishing on January 2023.