Buddha Sunrise

A Response to the Events of September 11th, 2001

Digital artwork
by

Ron Koster

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In March of 2001, the iconoclastic Taliban regime destroyed the 1500-year-old
Buddhas of Bamiyan, the two largest statues of the Buddha ever created.

On September 11th, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were brought down
in New York City by terrorist attacks.

And yet, the pair of giants — both pairs, and all that they (and their destruction)
both represented — continue to live on in memory, and certainly now for all eternity.

Note: The Buddhas, as shown in the above artwork,
are in proportion to each other in height, just as they were in Afghanistan
before they were destroyed by the Taliban (the taller Buddha was 53 metres high,
and the shorter one 38 metres). For this piece, I made the height of
the taller Buddha's shoulder roughly equivalent to the height of the WTC buildings,
with the top of his head inadvertently about as high as the transmission tower
which was atop the north WTC tower.

The original snapshots (reduced) from which
the above artwork was created...

Photo of the New York City skyline by Ria Koster,
taken two weeks before the September 11th tragedy
(used with permission)

...as well as these three photos of the Buddhas of Bamiyan...

The first two black & white shots were used to make
the Buddhas for the artwork; the colour shot was used
to get a colour sample from.

Many thanks to...

Bryn Jones (University of Notre Dame, Australia)
and
Fabio Remondino (Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry, Zurich)

...for their kind and virtually indispensible assistance in acquiring
the high-resolution images of the Bamiyan Buddhas.

For further information on the Bamiyan Buddhas, please visit:

The Buddhas of Bamiyan
which features information on the history and significance of the statues,
photos documenting their destruction by the Taliban,
plus 3-dimensional, computer-generated reconstructions

...and, for additional information, see...

The Buddhas of Bamiyan: Challenged Witnesses of Afghanistan's Forgotten Past

Copyright © Ron Koster / Psymon
All original artwork on this domain may not be reproduced or distributed
in any manner without explicit permission of Ron Koster / Psymon
(with the exception, of course, of those versions of artwork created
specifically for download and personal use as desktop wallpaper).
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