"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'universe', a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest
- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affectation for a few people near us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion
to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

- Albert Einstein

When traveling I think about how my writing, photography, and filmmaking can be accomplished with a certain eloquence and insight without stating the obvious. As an art historian I want to communicate my impressions of the art and architecture of where I am. Photographing and media recording is how I try to convey my experiences of a place with subtlety. The people, the smells, the sounds. Inside these caves the visitor is enveloped in darkness, a space illuminated by shafts of light that change position throughout the day. It is always damp. In some of the cave interiors, deep into its dark chambers, you can hear bats and smell their guano as it wafts from the stale air in the back toward the entrance of the cave.

Walking through the thirty-four primary caves at Ellora near Aurangabad, India I want to make photographs that reflect the intended and inherent meaning of the caves themselves. In the galleries of Buddha images and the pantheon of Hindu and Jain deities, the 8th century craftsmen expressed concepts of “Self” and “Śūnyatā”, the Vedas, poetic and epic verses and the “cosmic breath of life.”

Why did they do this? Sculptor and documentary photographer Carmel Bergson, who photographed at Ellora, said in her book, the relief sculptures and interiors were carved, “…to incorporate and harness within the defined limits of the plastic frame a mirror of the internal life of the devotee.”