Back to Egypt

Looking at Do Do Jin Ming's photographs, one is reminded of what Mary Douglas the anthropologist said about the proximity of purity to danger. Her photographs are clean and spare; they show an eye for pattern and abstraction; they have a beautiful simplicity. Yet there is also something eccentric about these images, some aporetic quality that complicates them and provokes a sec...

Looking at Do Do Jin Ming's photographs, one is reminded of what Mary Douglas the anthropologist said about the proximity of purity to danger. Her photographs are clean and spare; they show an eye for pattern and abstraction; they have a beautiful simplicity. Yet there is also something eccentric about these images, some aporetic quality that complicates them and provokes a second look. They seem to lead us to Rilke's remark that beauty is only the beginning of terror that we are still just able to bear. Consider to begin with the two very different looking but equally intriguing works which are quite deliberately given similar titles: Pyraminds I and Pyraminds II.