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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Three: Stirring emotions through atmosphere and mood. > In the Shadow of Buddha, Bagan, Myanmar, 2005
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03-FEB-2005

In the Shadow of Buddha, Bagan, Myanmar, 2005

Bagan, a city of thousand ruined temples, is perhaps the most mystical place in Burma. And never does it seem more mysterious than at sunset, as the angle and color of the setting sun creates a shadow of a man, and blending it into the deep orange brick adorned with an icon of divinity. To bring out the mood in this image, I use the color of sunset, the shadows cast by it, and juxtapose within them the symbols of both man and divinity. The mood and atmosphere is shadowed and mysterious, yet also warm and hopeful. These emotional tones are expressed by the mood and atmosphere I’ve structured within this image.

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Phil Douglis18-May-2006 19:40
I am very much like you, Jenene. Organized religion itself is not my thing, but the human spirit means everything to me. I do whatever I can to reference it in my images, as I tried to do here. Thanks for adding your own impressions.
JSWaters18-May-2006 06:46
I am not a particularly religious person, though I think spirituality important. This signifies the importance of faith (whatever that may mean to you) being a humming in the background, always there, always constant. The self effacing deity stands in shadow, allowing the human, although an unformed shadow himself, to bask in the glow of revelation.
Phil Douglis11-Aug-2005 17:15
Thanks, Lisa -- there is no need to really define why we may love a photograph. I am simply grateful that you do. But you are on the right track when you speak of the rich colors and the mysterious shadows here. As I mentioned to Zandra just below, the colors trigger a hopeful emotion, and the shadows are raising questions, some of them going so far as to suggest the mystery of life itself. I agree -- the Buddha figure is very real, even though it essentially represents a theological concept. And the shadow of the man is transitory and unreal, even though we know the person creating it was very much alive.
Guest 11-Aug-2005 13:46
I love this. Not even sure why. The richness of the color and the mystery of the shadow next to the buddha I think pulled me in. Somehow the statue seems to represent something real and steady and the shadow of the living man something more impermanent. A nice powerful punch of an image which elevates and stimulates...
Phil Douglis15-Mar-2005 23:18
Nothing creates a mysterious mood better than the interplay of light and shadow. There is whole genre of film making, known as "film noire" dating from the black and white movies of the 1930s, which features themes that are more negative than positive, with an overall dark and shadowy outlook. Dim lighting, shadows reflected on walls, and dramatic angles are all part of that style. Many of them, as you say were mysteries. Often the characters in them are in hopeless situations, and fight against forces that threaten them. In this image, some of those same things happen. Only instead of hopelessness, the warmth of the color creates a mood that triggers a hopeful emotion. Instead of working from a negative premise, as film noire does, it seems to imply a more positive framework. And instead of threat, we have questions. As you say so well, those questions may well involve the nature and meaning of life itself. Thanks, Zandra, for raising these thoughtful ideas.
Guest 15-Mar-2005 18:41
The one thing which more me really makes the mystery here Phil is the shadow. It comes from own experience in movies. The hat makes me think of an old detective story, which are all about mystery and solving the pussle. You combine two elemts here to create the mood. Leaving the shadow in the sunlit part and the budha, the divine as you say, in the shadowed area make me think of the Budha as the mystery that is hiddne in the shadoes and needs to be solved. That in turn, is part of what religion is for, a tool for getting answers to the big questions...what life is really about and what we are doing here. So the mood is there but also, because your use of these particular object you as fundamental questions as well. What is life about...do you dare to solve the mystery?
monique jansen02-Mar-2005 11:05
warmth, shadows and light play against each other, also the shadowed figure looking at the temple, plays his role in this setting to create a particular atmosphere.
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