88 Stones

This book contains 88 stones collected by Peter Granser and his wife ­Beatrice Theil near a small hut in the village of Kamiyama on the island of ­Shikoku. Shikoku is famous for the Ohenro (虃笭), a pilgrimage path connecting 88 temples, and for its stones, which are used in many Japanese gardens.

The inanimate stones seem to pulsate with an essence of their own on each page of the book. Organised according to size starting from large rocks that fill out the entire page and ending with almost invisible little pebbles, the book captures an intangible temporality; how long have these stones been here and what have they seen and lived through? Still lives are transformed into intimate portraits and surfaces into portals, their soft or rough expression carrying a sense of eternal presence. The images are framed by Robert Lax’s poem from 1962, which echoes the themes of repetition, stylistic subtlety and a quiet yet profound simplicity that define the project as a whole.