JAROSLAV PONCAR
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
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INTRODUCTION
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C.V.
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PUBLICATIONS
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ADDITIONAL CONTEXT
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WORKS
Angkor
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
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INTRODUCTION
In 1993, when a physics professor from Cologne, Germany, visited the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia for the first time he was, like all visitors, deeply impressed and fascinated by the gigantic trees growing there. In his own words:
“These trees in this exceptional size exist only in Angkor Wat. They don’t have a name in any of the languages I know—except their Latin name: Tetrameles nudiflora. Besides the vast temple compound and the huge faces with their enigmatic smiles, these trees are another emblem of Angkor and are among the strongest impressions that one gets. The French call them fromagères because they look like melting cheese. They belong to the botanical family of ficus trees. Angkor was discovered by Westerners in 1860. When the French started to restore Angkor they decided to remove the small vegetation at two temples (Ta Prohm and Preah Khan), but to leave the gigantic trees as they were. One can only guess the age of these trees, since tropical trees do not grow rings that one could simply count. On the oldest photographs, more than one hundred years old, the trees look as they still look now. From all of the photo books I had been able to get hold of, I only knew of the net of roots growing through the temple ruins. My spontaneous reaction was to photograph these trees as vertical panoramas in their impressive beauty.
On my first trip I only had my old Russian panoramic camera with me. Due to its proportions it did not work. The right camera was at home in Cologne. So I wanted to come back. Beginning in 1994 I tried to photograph as many “cheese trees” as possible. Luckily I was able to join a restoration project initiated by Cologne University. I photographed about 35 trees in the four years following. It was good that I had captured them on film, because in the meantime some of them have died of natural causes. They died in storms or were killed by the Strangler Fig (Ficus aurea).”
One asks what the trees of Angkor Wat have seen in the course of their long lives. We don’t know. Neither do we know how long they will last. However, Jaroslav Poncar’s photographs guarantee their survival.
