Mikiya Takimoto's "Prière" (French for "prayer") is part of a two-series project (the other series being "Lumière") created during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many, Takimoto was forced to stay at home as infections exploded worldwide, with most assignments cancelled and unable to take photographs as usual. In 2020, Takimoto participated in the Kyotographie International Photography Festival and exhibited his work at Daishoin Temple in Kyoto, where he learned about the Buddhist concept of 'enyu' (a form of complete harmony and unity without the loss of respective positions and mutual contradictions) and was inspired by the history and beauty of the temple's gardens and architecture. He continued to visit other temples, photographing individual details and moments that suggested the serene sense of time and circularity he had experienced.

“One drop of rain leads to a small ripple, expanding into a circle and turning into a river, and in praise of the flow of impermanence, gradually rises and merges with the ocean. This state of merging into the water’s surface signifies the link between macrocosm and the microcosm. Without beginning or end, the circle, a symbol of the universe, is seen as a mental state in which one is completely free of all attachments. In eternity, a constant flow dating to the beginning of time, the lives of all things, nature and human beings among them, rise, merge, and circulate to form the world. It took some four billion years for the breathtakingly beautiful nature of the earth to be realized through a series of volcanic eruptions and the creation of one sea after another.” ― from Mikiya Takimoto’s afterword

first edition