SEASONS: Lan Su Garden | Carol Isaak

Carol Isaak is a Portland-based travel photographer drawn to the quiet intelligence of place. In SEASONS: Lan Su Chinese Garden created in honor of the garden’s 25th anniversary, she returns, again and again, to a living book of stone, water, and light. Within Lan Su’s whitewashed walls, where corridors open to courtyards and rooms spill toward a koi-filled pond, Isaak attends to what is already there: the cadence of shifting shadows, the dialogue between scholar’s rocks and seasonal plantings, the way reflection doubles space and slows time.

Her images trace the garden’s Ming-era principles – framed views, borrowed scenery, the dance of solid and void – while inviting viewers into an unfamiliar territory – perceptual and psychological. Observation becomes participation; looking becomes listening. Rather than constructing scenes, Isaak works with the garden’s own choreography, building photographs through layers, alignments, and optical riddles that reveal how structure and season continually re-compose one another.

Rooted in Portland and inspired by Suzhou, Lan Su holds a lineage of friendship and cultural exchange. Isaak’s book and exhibition are at once a contemplative record and a tribute to the Chinese community whose aesthetic legacy shapes this city. Her work has been exhibited in China and across the United States. At PLACE, she offers a mindful invitation: step in, slow down, and let the seasons teach you how to see.