Sacred Spaces - Forbidden Places
The Temples of  Luxor
 

In December of 2009, I realized a multi-year dream of visiting the ancient city of Thebes, now Luxor, on the Nile in Egypt, 400 miles south of Cairo. Initially, my interest in this place was with a feathered serpent character that shows up at several locations around the world. In ancient Egypt he was known as Horus, the god of the sky who oversaw the Pharaohs and their good fortune. In Mexico he is known as Quetzalcoatl

 

However, after discovering HDR in 2008, my attention quickly turned to documenting the temples around Luxor as had never been done before. On this trip, I shot over 2200 images comprising over 700 HDR sets.

 

Upon returning home I was overwhelmed by the volume of material I had captured. I began to formulate a plan to produce a gallery show based on my trip to Egypt with the working title “Sacred Spaces & Forbidden Places”. I decided to produce a small number of finished prints for this exhibition, probably around 10 large format prints and 16 smaller ones.  I ended up printing about 30. I also decided to hold back some of my work for future processing as I got better at HDR and the entire post-process. Watch for those to be posted in the coming years.

 

What follows then represents the ‘best of the best’ of the 2200 images and 700 sets shot in Luxor. The images are designed to inspire and leave the viewer awestruck, much as visiting the temples around Luxor will leave you awestruck in person.

 

Words cannot convey the majesty of the ancient sacred spaces and what the Egyptians accomplished; I hope that in some small way, these images will.

 

Enjoy!

C.G. 1-2010