Revealing the realm

It was in 1860 when Henri Mouhot, the French naturalist and explorer, first chanced upon the surreal ruins of Angkor having hacked his way through a dripping thesaurus of tangled jungle and dangling spiders.

And boy, did Mouhot hate insects. They landed on his face while he slept and in his soup while he slurped. He really had it in for them because - he felt - they really had it in for him.

I fantasise about what Mouhot might have said when he first saw one of those massive stone smiles peering straight back at him through the dense forest. Whether it was, "Oh, mon Dieu!" Or "Merde! Will you look at that!" Or perhaps, "Somebody get that disgusting bug off my back." We'll never know.

What he wrote was typical for explorer speak of the time: "An exuberant vegetation has overgrown everything, galleries and towers, so that is difficult to force a passage."

How appropriate. And he was only one machete slice into 200 square kilometres of temples.

Mouhot echoes down the years as a somewhat brave and eccentric figure. I like to imagine shedloads of bearers hauling trunks full of scientific equipment with Mouhot in the lead, festooned with pockets and pencils and magnifying glasses, holding a butterfly net and sporting a large hat and a huge beard. Local people he encountered must have stood, gawped and been rendered speechless.

One hundred and thirty years later, Martin Reeves arrived on a rusty moped with a Nikon Fe camera and 15 soggy dollars on his own voyage of discovery. In 1992, there was still the occasional "chatter of machine gun fire" that broke the silence and kept the tourist groups away. Neglect from 20 years of hideous war and genocide and the Vietnamese invasion had returned many of the temples to the jungle.

For Reeves, a somewhat brave and bohemian photographer, it was pure heaven.

"Its mystery and sheer scale held me in a spell," writes Reeves. "I became captivated, bewitched, and was never the same again. I returned many times."

Although the Khmer kingdom came to a close thanks to the Siamese "Shock and Awe" Tour of 1431 coupled with a long build-up of silt, "today it is the other kings, the giant trees of Ta Prohm and Preah Khan, that are in demise", notes Reeves.

"The restoration teams who cleared the thick jungle around Angkor left a few of these huge silk cotton trees - many centuries old - to remain entwined with the sandstone and laterite blocks of the temples, so as to bestow a sense of the 'lost city' ... they can take root above ground, lodge in the minds of visitors, but sadly are beginning to rot and fall or are being rapidly choked by strangler figs - the true conquerors of the jungle."

But the dislodged stones and a thousand enigmatic smiles beaming out and down from royal temples had long cast their spell on Reeves and "Angkor - into the Hidden Realm" is the result.

Opening this book is like opening a parachute into, quite literally, a hidden universe. It transports and absorbs you with its ferns and gateways, apsaras and devas, sunbeams and shadows.

And here, I must declare an interest. I've known Reeves and followed his career for well over a decade. In truth, it's less of a career, far more a quest but without the map. Fuelled by his urge for Asia and to capture its pulse and spirit, his curiosity has taken him all over India, Burma, Thailand and Sapa in northern Vietnam.

He's been wined, dined and marooned. Motorbikes have slipped beneath him. Cameras battered and drenched. Boots have been lost in highland mud - and some dignity too. Over the years, he has arrived out of the blue and back from the mist at my Bangkok studio in all kinds of altered states. Then vanished after a kip, a drink and a chat. It hasn't been easy. But it has been real and, miraculously, nothing has deterred him. He has kept faith with his viewfinder. A true pilgrim of vision. And he still owes me ten quid.

The first picture I ever saw of his was of the Taj Mahal taken from the southwest corner, so the monument to lost love is framed by trees. I've been to the Taj, but I had never seen anything like this before and I have never seen anything like it since. It looked as though it had landed from somewhere. It was not of this world. It was ethereal, spiritual and stunningly beautiful. It was also my first introduction to what "infra-red" photography could do. I was completely blown away.

The term "infrared" can be a little off putting to the layman. It suggests bespectacled dorks in white coats fiddling with chemicals, lasers or

X-ray machines from the 1950s.

"It's essentially a black-and-white film," explains Reeves. "It is also sensitive to light from the infra-red spectrum - which is invisible to the human eye. Foliage in particular reflects this unseen light, appearing radiant and ghostly in the final print. A red glass filter placed over the lens allows only red and infrared light to pass onto the film emulsion."

 Regarding my bemused expression, Reeves continued: "I like to think this form of photography reveals something to us that is there - its just that we can't see it. Just as dogs can hear sounds we can't. People can't see infrared light - but film is sensitive to it and can reveal a hidden world."

I think I understand. But whether I do or not doesn't really matter. At the end of the day I just adore the effect it creates. And it does reveal elements we can't see, because it captures light we can't see. It infuses everything with a dream-like, ancient quality. Many a reviewer has remarked that Reeves' work has a "Tolkien" feel about it. Middle Earth rules, okay? This is accurate, but it's more than that. There's a delicious and delicate subtlety to the photographs that exude a sense of eternal calm, as weightless as it is intriguing. In a word, magical.

It would be entirely reasonable to presume that with such a rich, photogenic tapestry as Angkor, all a lensman has to do is point and click for an award-winning picture. Mais, non. Reeves would spend hours - days - wandering and waiting in the temple jungle complex for the right light, the preferred angle, the shadow slant, the perfect shot.

Indeed, the 127 photographs in this book would no doubt look fine in any format, but what infrared does is push the whole process in a mysterious way, or as Reeves has it, "it gives me a tweak in a fascinating direction".

It certainly does. And if there was ever a subject that lends itself to this form of photography, then Angkor Wat is it.

I would like to think that Henri Mahout, if he can ever untangle himself from some giant celestial dragonfly, would be immensely proud and fascinated by this book because it's not just the way Angkor has been exposed, its the way it's been revealed.

And, like his own expedition, this book has been a true journey of discovery.

"Angkor - Into the Hidden Realm" is published by Mark Standen Publishing and is available at Asia Books, Bt1,695. Reeves' photographs will also be featured in the upcoming book "9 Days in the Kingdom" that features 55 of the world's top photographers to be published in honour of His Majesty the King's 80th birthday. It is due out in November. For more information, visit 9Days-InTheKingdom.com. To view Martin's entire Asian portfolio, check out TheHiddenRealms.com.

Roger Beaumont

The Nation