Borobudur

Caroline & Hughes Dubois

Hughes Dubois, a photographer with an advertising background, developed a passion for photographing objets d’art early in life. Within his career spanning 40 years, his lens—set upon as many masterpieces—has demonstrated a deep understanding and sensitivity towards Tribal and Classical Arts in the course of collaborations with museums and art collectors all over the world. By sharpening his gaze through contact with thousands of works, he has acquired the knack of capturing their essence. He is keen to express whatever about an object reveals its singularity, expression and emotion. To date, he has produced and contributed to over 180 art books and exhibition catalogues.His photographs are works of art in their own right, and recognized as such thanks to numerous international awards including the International Tribal Art Book Prize (PILAT), the ICMA Gold Medal, and the Photography Award of the 2014 MGA Book Awards. His artistic work includes “Le sensible et La force“, the object of an exhibition at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren (Belgium) in 2004, and“Formes & Façons“ shown at the Musée du Val de Bagnes and at Mauvoisin Dam (Switzerland) in 2013—making up a total of around ten solo exhibitions and five group shows (www.hughesdubois.be).

Caroline Dubois has worked with the Presse Filipacchi group, producing fashion and beauty pages for the magazine Femme, as well as advertorials for Paris Match International. She went on to set up a communications agency specialized in designing and organizing cultural events for brand names as well as the press group Lagardère. At the same time, after painting for over 10 years, she is now developing personal photography projects, namely her work on fleeting memories.

In 2015, Caroline and Hughes Dubois launched Luna Light Agency to create and produce joint photographic projects, edit and organize cultural events. This was the case with Borobudur Under The Full Moon, a project lasting for four years plus on the world’s largest Buddhist temple, Borobudur in Indonesia. Their photographs appear a limited-edition portfolio featuring a selection of platinum palladium prints, as well as an art book and a travelling exhibition organized under the high patronage of UNESCO.

Few words about our photographic work

Following a touristic tour at Borobudur, as we climbed its steps, we were mesmerised not only by the monument’s artistic beauty. Over 2,700 Buddhist relief carvings cover the walls of Borobudur, the first step was to make a choice. A selection of 63 of them was made by the Guimet Museum’s scientific team in order to understand the purpose of the teachings of Borobudur. This first selection was supplemented with the photographer’s selection made according to aesthetic criteria and to the quality of conservation of relief. A total of 108 photographs were chosen, which is a Buddhist symbolic number.

Technically, we decided to adopt a frontal angle that eliminated perspective. To photograph the panels, the camera needed to be directly parallel to banish all optical movement except for a digital sensor, mounted on a digital back. We executed our shots of the bas reliefs with a Linhof Technika, equipped with a custom-made Schneider Kreuznach wide-angle lens.

We also decided to create ‘life-size’ works. In other words, our digital ‘negatives’ would be exactly the same size as the bas-reliefs photographed so that we could make prints the same size as the panels, with a one-to-one pixel ratio. This precision is reflected in the size of each picture file: 450 million pixels per image. To produce each file, we had to ‘stitch’ at least six photographs of 80 million pixels into one final image.

Back in the field, it didn’t take long before we were confronted with real-life circumstances. The narrowness of the galleries made it difficult to place the camera sufficiently far away to prevent distortions. Also, the walls and floors were rarely even, complicating the task of placing the camera completely parallel to the relief we were photographing. On top of this, photography is unforgiving, and damage and discoloration often interfered with our aim to emphasise the art.

Time was perhaps the biggest challenge. At the most, we could only photograph two panels a night. Weather permitting, we could only shoot four to five nights a month. Simple maths tells the story: we spent over 110 nights on the monument over a period of more than four years! In a sense, we mutated from photographic-visitors to photographic-pilgrims. So, too, we began to perceive ourselves as sculptors of light, having developed light pens to enhance dimensionality and draw attention to subtle details. The end result was 108 images.

Depending upon one’s perspective, this portfolio is a work of love or determination. From our point of view, it is both a symbol of our love, a gift to this great Buddhist monument, and our humble contribution to the awareness of this jewel of World Heritage.