In March 2016, photographers Dan Rubin and Craig Mod spent 8 days walking 107 km (66 mi) Japan’s 1,000+ year old Kumano Kodo pilgrimage path. In their own words: a “long, quiet walk in the woods.” Along the way they took a few photographs. Well, 3000 photographs and, when it was all done, they locked themselves in an old Japanese house, sifted through all their memories, and selected just 57 that would become “Koya Bound.”
Koya Bound is in no way a guidebook. It won’t tell you exactly how to get to the Kumano and what paths to take because for the authors, walking is about “adventures and curiosities often nearer to you than you may realize.” Instead, the book is an artifact of this pilgrimage walk – one of two UNESCO World Heritage pilgrimage walks – that captures “mountain time, and towering cedar time, and crumpled earth time, and ancient teahouse time.”
