SHAOLIN TEMPLE | Photography By Tomasz Gudzowaty

SHAOLIN TEMPLE | Photography By Tomasz Gudzowaty
The winner of many World Press Photo awards, Polish born Tomasz Gudzowaty  initiates us to the almost mythic and rigorous training monks undergo within the halls of the Shaolin Temple in China’s Henan province.. Everyone recalls the popularity Kung Fu enjoyed in the 70′s and 80′s in Tv series and film alike, the meditating icon of the pious warrior monk, a solitary beacon of light in a world void of justice and compassion. Impossible feats of inhuman strength always stimulated the western mind, yet for the Buddhist monks themselves, the Shaolin discipline is a meditative fom, not a show, the martial exercises a way to counter the body’s weaknesses. Becoming commercialised and associated with kitsch depictions, Kung Fu has suffered in the hands of the media and Chinese Communist authorities alike, a number of the order’s monks being imprisoned by the Red Guards.  Tomasz Gudzowaty breaks the illusion and unveils the mysticism flowering once again in the land beneath the ancient temple.

SOURCE: theforestmagazine.com