Stone Woman

Stone Woman takes its name from Zen master Dōgen’s Mountains and Rivers Sutra, where the “stone woman” walks and gives birth at night, insisting that to look at nature is to look at truth itself. These photographs invite that kind of looking: simple surroundings infused with a mystic gaze, where mountains are both mountains and more than mountains. The work is less about interpretation than about letting mystery breathe, allowing nature, friendship, and the moment itself to be the sutra.

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At its heart is Bladimir (Blad), my dear friend in El Valle, Panama. In the first image, they appear cocooned, and later, they emerge like a butterfly. Blad often called themself La Mariposa, and to see this accidently embodied on film felt like a gift. In a traditional mountain village, where queerness is rarely welcomed, Blad embodies a quiet defiance of categorization. They are not a label or an identity, but simply Blad. To me, they are the stone woman, carrying paradox, resilience, and beauty in their being.

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Stone Woman is both personal and universal: a meditation on Zen seeing, a tribute to a friend’s courage, and an invitation to stand still before the living sutra of the world. Rather than decode it, I encourage you to receive it. Let these images remind you that life itself (stone, river, butterfly and mountain) is nothing less than miraculous.