A root-entangled doorway inside the ancient Khmer temple of Ta Prohm suggests how the “Lost City” of Angkor might have appeared upon its "rediscovery" in northwestern Cambodia in the mid-19th Century. The ancient temple once served as a royal Mahayana Buddhist monastery and university at the height of the Khmer Empire in the late 12th Century.
Ta Prohm remains in an intentionally unrestored state of partial collapse with strangler-fig or silk-cotton tree roots enveloping parts of the temple structure. The trees eventually lend some support to the partly overgrown and gently declining "Jungle Temple.” Finely carved sandstone statues of
apsaras or celestial maidens and
devatas appear in the niches that still adorn the temple walls.
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Rethinking Portraiture | Personal Faves | National Geographic 