"America Stones 20"

Elaine Ling's oeuvre is a pilgrimage on the path of stone from the African desert of the Kalahari to the Shen Lao (Spirit Road) in China. For years Ling has photographed natural and artificial stone across five continents. When dealing with natural rock, Ling focuses on unusual rock formations &endash;so unusual it is often hard to accept that they were molded by erosion alone. Although her work is partially a record, Ling's interest is in representing her own encounter with these powerful stone entities. To that effect, she often breaks up the image into diptychs that focus our attention on different sides of the stone and makes us aware of its inner balance. The way her approach to the statue of Buddha in China aims at equilibrium is not much different from the balance she gives to a stone in the Kalahari Desert. Perhaps Ling is suggesting that as we look at the Buddha, we have to imagine the rock from which it was carved and as we look at a natural stone, we ought to visualize the many forms within it. Of particular interest are those slabs that bear human markings like pictograms or ideograms. The relationship of images to language in these works is as complex as it deserves to be. The dune reflects the elephants not only through an accidental visual resemblance, but by alluding to a story of migration and extermination across desert lands.

"China Stones 14"

"China Stones 2"