// SEFA YAMAK · V.2026CANLI
SEFA YAMAK

01 · 2016–2019 · Varanasi & Pushkar, India · 17 photographs

Untitled Portraits — India

Seventeen portraits made along the ghats of Varanasi and around the desert town of Pushkar — holy men, elders, and the people met between the river and the dust. Edition of 25.

[ Series manifesto ]

I went to Varanasi the first time in the winter of 2017 with one camera and no plan. I came back twice more. What kept pulling me back was the light — a low, slow light that arrives between the temples at six in the morning and lays itself on a man's face the way nothing else does. The sadhus are the ones who stay still inside it. Some have been on the ghats for forty years. Some arrived last month. I do not try to explain them. I sit with them as long as they will let me, and when the light is right and the face is ready, I make one frame, sometimes two. The Ganges smells of marigolds and wet wood and woodsmoke. The ash on their skin is real ash. None of this is staged. None of it could be.

[ Archive context ]

PlaceVaranasi & Pushkar, India
Years2016–2019
EditionEdition of 25, archival pigment on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm
ThemesPortraiture · Pilgrimage · Ritual · Dawn light
Place
Tone
Format
Portrait(8)
A Hindu sadhu with a topknot and white forehead tilak gazes into the lens at the Varanasi ghats — fine art black-and-white portrait by Sefa Yamak, Sadhus series.
Varanasi, India · Ed. of 25Blessed
An Aghori sadhu reads a child's notebook before a blue Kali idol in Varanasi — fine art colour portrait by Sefa Yamak, Sadhus series.
Varanasi, India · Ed. of 25The Reader
Profile of a sadhu with intricate white dot face paint and a cigarette, Varanasi — fine art black-and-white portrait by Sefa Yamak, Sadhus series.
Varanasi, India · Ed. of 25Returning
A close view of an elderly man in an orange head wrap drawing on a small clay pipe, his face and long grey beard partly hidden behind a curl of smoke — fine art portrait by Sefa Yamak, India series.
Varanasi, India · Ed. of 25Through the Smoke
Three elderly men in orange robes and turbans sit on a wooden boat on calm water, the misty ghats of Varanasi rising behind them — fine art portrait by Sefa Yamak, India series.
Varanasi, India · Ed. of 25Three on the Water
A black-and-white close portrait of an elderly man in thick-framed glasses with a patterned scarf, his lined face emerging from near-total darkness — fine art portrait by Sefa Yamak, India series.
Varanasi, India · Ed. of 25The Quiet Face
Profile of a bearded man in a white turban with a mala around his neck against a plain wall — fine art portrait by Sefa Yamak, India series.
Pushkar, India · Ed. of 25The White Wrap
A bearded man in a knit cap and heavy-framed glasses emerges from deep shadow, faintly smiling — fine art portrait by Sefa Yamak, India series.
Pushkar, India · Ed. of 25Out of the Dark
Landscape(9)
An orange-robed sadhu with wild white hair raises his hand in a blessing by the Ganges in Varanasi — fine art colour portrait by Sefa Yamak, Sadhus series.
Varanasi, India · Ed. of 25Devotion
Three sadhus in saffron robes meditate on a riverbed at sunset near Varanasi — fine art portrait by Sefa Yamak, Sadhus series.
Varanasi, India · Ed. of 25At Dusk
A yellow-turbaned sadhu lifts a rudraksha mala in a weathered blue temple doorway, Varanasi — fine art colour portrait by Sefa Yamak, Sadhus series.
Varanasi, India · Ed. of 25The Blue Door
Two laughing sadhus in festival face paint greet the camera outside a temple in Varanasi — fine art colour portrait by Sefa Yamak, Sadhus series.
Varanasi, India · Ed. of 25The Welcome
A lone sadhu stands at the bow of a boat with the Varanasi ghats behind under a grey sky — fine art portrait by Sefa Yamak, Sadhus series.
Varanasi, India · Ed. of 25The Prow
An older man in a patterned turban and worn light clothes sits with his arm resting on his raised knee — fine art portrait by Sefa Yamak, India series.
Pushkar, India · Ed. of 25Resting Between Things
A small child wrapped in a patterned veil is held against a woman's shoulder, laundry hanging behind them — fine art portrait by Sefa Yamak, India series.
Pushkar, India · Ed. of 25Carried
A man in white sits on a cot and holds a large framed portrait of a veiled woman up over his own face in a courtyard — fine art portrait by Sefa Yamak, India series.
Pushkar, India · Ed. of 25Holding Her Up
A weathered adult hand steadies a cup at a small child's mouth as the child drinks, lit against deep shadow — fine art portrait by Sefa Yamak, India series.
Pushkar, India · Ed. of 25The Cup Between Them

[ Read around this series ]

On light, and how little of it you needTwenty years in and I am still only photographing one thing. Not faces. Light, and what it does to a face when no one is arranging it.How to ask a stranger if you may take their portraitThe picture is decided in the thirty seconds before the camera comes up. Most of those seconds have nothing to do with photography.Golden hour: the light that does half the work for youWhy the hour after sunrise and before sunset flatters almost everything, and how to actually use it instead of just standing in it.

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