A disciple's lot: laying stones along a very long road

The American Jewish artist believes that by focusing his lens on nature he has found a way of aligning himself with "an aesthetic that's most beautifully and uniquely Chinese" without taking up a brush.

"Ancient Chinese landscape painters extracted their whole vocabulary from nature," he says, pointing to the various effects their inky brush made on the absorbent rice paper, effects intended to depict everything from a dripping, misty riverside scene to a gnarled tree and a wind-whipped rock.

Shot with a Leica using 35 mm film, his beguiling black-and-white pictures have often been mistaken for ink paintings.

Yet from the day photography was born in the mid-19th century it was thought that it would replace painting-landscapes and portraits in particular-rather than reconjuring its magic.

"In the West, photography was viewed with great suspicion by painters who feared that the new invention might render their old art obsolete," says Cherney, pointing to the Hudson River School painters who romanticized the American landscape by capturing it at its most sublime.

This often included, among others, a stormy sky and an equally tempestuous sea, both reflective of the drama of light.

"To seize the fleeting moment-this was exactly what photography was invented to do," he says. "However, with traditional Chinese landscape painting the intention was completely different."