“Seeing Angkor Wat bathed in the eerie surreal light of the eclipse led me to experiment with new techniques to attempt to capture the spiritual beauty of Angkor. Standard photography techniques could not convey the dreamy, otherworldly essence of the site so I turned to other alternatives and eventually found that the images resulting from using infrared film rendered the subjects most closely to my personal vision of them. These prints combine the impressionistic, moody effects of infrared film with a subtle sepia tone to achieve this effect.”
Photographer John McDermott’s IR images of Asia seem to me to show the ruins and pagodas in a sort of dream time, rather than on the day they were shot – the visitors to this pagoda in Myanmar are faded, almost like ghosts, but the ancient gold dome shines like new. I love how the IR film blackens the blue sky, which reminds me of the solar eclipses I’ve seen.
