Let me start by saying
that I have never seen Tomb Raider.[1] But apparently part of it was
shot here.
And if not TR, it was only a matter of time before
something was shot here. It is so visually unique, providing such
sublime contrast and a visual portal to wonder, that it seems like it
could carry a thin narrative almost by the sheer weight of its visual
novelty and juxtaposition.
When I found out that a
work trip to Cambodia was likely, all I knew was that Angkor Wat was
the thing people recommended in Cambodia. And ever since I missed
out on the waterfall and the golden frog in Guyana, I try not to miss
out on ‘the thing to see’ when I cross a lot of time zones for
work. But tacking a couple days onto a week long work trip (which is
closer to 8 days once you add travel) always seems intractable,
despite my wife’s consistent and unbelievably generous openness to
it. So I checked out a couple books on the region…and when I
flipped to the page on Ta Prohm, I remember thinking “I need to
make this happen.” Worth it.
The irony[2] of Ta Prohm
is that the restorers essentially gave up on it. It was so overgrown
that they decided to leave it in its ‘original state’ as a kind
of ‘observational control’ so tourists could see what one of
these temples looked like before it was restored (if they ran out of
other things to do). But the creeping figs ‘flowing’ over and
through the ancient temple rocks became iconic, second only to the
profile of Ankor Wat itself.
One interesting note was
the consistent friction I felt between two modes of experiencing this
remarkable resource. These modes of experience seemed to generally
correlate with certain ethnic associations, but I couldn’t seem to
write that post without unhelpful ethnic generalization, so for the
purposes of this discussion let’s call these two groups the
“claimers” and the “discoverers”. One group of individuals
(the “discoverers”) seemed consistently frustrated as they tried
to snap people-free pictures very short temporal window between the
constant stream of people (the “claimers”) taking their turns
posing in front of the object of interest.
The “discoverers”
wanted to capture the illusion of remoteness.[3] Other people
contaminated their pictures even though high human density was part
of the experience as we were getting to experience it. The other
mode put the value on personally inhabiting the object…becoming
part of literally every image worth capturing. In the first case, a
person-less picture was the evidence of the value of the experience
as the value of the experience was set by scarcity (“I was there
and got to experience something rare and beautiful”). In the
second case, the value of the experience is in the personal
association (“I was there, see, there I am”).
_______
[1]I
remember when it came out that there was talk about Angelina Jolie’s
breasts being animated (er digitally enhance) and my thin inclination
to see it based on subject mater evaporated.
[2]Aihctbk
(an abbreviation from my main blog for “as it has come to be
known”)
[3]If you peruse the
pictures in this blog, you will not have to wonder which group I fell
into. And it was actually the process of repenting of my frustration
as a cultural particularity and recognizing that I was frustrated
with the posing tourists for my own sin of inauthenticity that got me
thinking about this.
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