Chasing the dragon

Boulder-based photographer William Corey visited Kyoto almost every year between 1974 and 2007, making over 600 color negatives of the city’s classic gardens. He worked with a refurbished Korona 8”x20” view camera. This heavy and cumbersome tool was used in the early 1900s to photograph large groups at banquets, but Corey found it ideal to capture the panoramic sweep of the gardens.  

A view camera provides the photographer with exceptional nuance and flexibility; a skilled operator can adjust the perspective, on both vertical and horizontal axes, as well as the plane of focus, allowing perfect sharpness in the foreground and background. Corey was painstaking in his approach. He would visit the gardens regularly for weeks in advance, studying how the light would change throughout the day to discern the perfect moment. In his book A Passing Shadow, Corey described the almost mystical experience when everything had fallen into place, and something whispered to press the shutter.

In April 2006, Corey was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. An operation saved his life but left him in a weakened condition. His wife and assistant, Reimi Adachi, and his doctors encouraged him to take photographs in Kyoto again. Adachi recalled how upon their return to Japan, he despaired that “after coming so far, he would be unable to photograph.” However, after revisiting Shisendo Temple, “his eyes began to sparkle.” He went to the garden three times a week for the next two months to prepare for this image, meticulously considering the spacing of pillars and stones for the composition. His illness caused him to “approach the subject more deeply, seeing beyond the surface scenery.” This image was taken on the morning of December 4th, 2006.  

Until his death in 2008, Corey continued to push the limits of photographic hardware. He had a vertical 20”x8” camera custom-built with the help of a NASA engineer, the only one of its kind in the world. His archive resides in the W. E. B. Du Bois Library of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His works have been viewed worldwide, including by the Emperor and Empress of Japan, who were gifted a large Corey panorama of Rocky Mountain National Park when they visited Colorado in 1994.