High Gods Altars
February 2019
Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam.
In front of each house of the island, a pillar.
Wood, concrete, bricks and stone form vertical elements, in style with the
house, to support offerings: flowers, liquors and incense sticks.
As a photographer and architect, I wonder: how can the human being build
the sacred?
How can we build something ineffable with tangible elements?
How do we aspire to connect with the High?
Verticality.
Wondering through the island, different designs display how informal
architecture can link the human and the superhuman; on top of the altar,
the smoke coming from the incense directly transforms the tangible into
the intangible, forming a string to the high Gods.
The series is part of ongoing research thought Europe and Asia, collecting
informal spiritual settings in order to understand how informal design
constructs the sacred.
