Larung Gar Buddhist Settlement Photography | China
Thousands of Red Hillside Homes in Sichuan
At first, the hillside looked almost abstract.
I photographed Larung Gar in 2015 in the remote Sertar region of Sichuan, China, where thousands of small red wooden homes climb the steep slopes around the Buddhist settlement. From a distance, the individual buildings almost disappear into one enormous pattern of colour, repetition and density.
That visual compression is what fascinated me. There is barely any empty space. One structure sits above another, then another, climbing relentlessly across the hillside. Most share the same deep red and brown tones, but small flashes of green, turquoise, yellow and brighter crimson appear in windows, doors and fabric, breaking up the repetition.
The scale is difficult to understand until I start looking closely. Every small rectangle is a home. Paths wind between them, buildings lean into the contours of the land, and the settlement seems to have grown organically rather than according to any simple grid.
Larung Gar sits at roughly 12,500 feet, and its isolation was part of what made being there so memorable for me. Yet photographically, I kept returning to the visual structure of the place.
I wanted the frame to feel almost overwhelming—to let the homes fill it completely, without sky or distant landscape providing relief. For me, that density is the photograph. What begins as a mass of red gradually reveals hundreds of individual details, each one part of a much larger hillside community.
© Dan Kosmayer, 2015
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About My Fine Art Photography
Every photograph in my collection comes from my own travels, explorations, and years behind the camera.
I create my work as photographic art rather than mass-produced decoration. From street portraits and abandoned places to landscapes, architecture, and the unusual subjects I discover along the way, each image begins with something that made me stop and look.
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