A Change of Guard

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Sunday 4 December 2011

Photo-Op: Line of Beauty

[PHOTO_OP1]

The Wall Street Journal
Barry Brukoff / The Vendome Press

In the late 1960s, Barry Brukoff began an ambitious project to photograph the ruins of the Khmer empire, which had flourished from the 9th to the 14th centuries among the monsoon-green forests and rice paddies of Cambodia. Though delayed by decades of war, he never lost his fascination with an art that prized order and harmony. 'Temples of Cambodia: The Heart of Angkor' (Vendome, 247 pages, $65) is a magnificent journey through the remnants of the least-known of the great world civilizations. Mr. Brukoff's photographs show the austere brick temples of the 7th and 8th centuries giving way to magnificently tiered 'temple mountains.' His studies of the Khmer's premier achievement, the 12th-century Angkor Wat complex, hint at its astonishing scale, frequently peeking out from a detail of one temple to capture other intricate structures behind. Yet Angkor Wat was just one part of the capital city—Angkor, with an estimated population of 750,000, would have been the world's largest city in the 1100s, and likely the most beautiful. Though they take ruins as their subject, Mr. Brukoff's images capture the most timeless elements of Khmer ingenuity. Choosing a perspective above that makes the colonnades of Bayon, another Angkor temple, seem endless, he shows the plan behind the beauty.

The Editors

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