Blessed

Not temples, not the burning, not the postcards. Faces.

The first morning I didn't lift the camera at all. You don't, here. The ghats wake up slow and you wake up with them, or you get nothing.

He was on the same step three mornings running. Above Assi Ghat, where the light comes in low off the Ganges and turns the smoke gold for about twenty minutes before the day goes flat. The ash on his forehead was applied at first light — the three horizontal stripes of the Shaivite tradition, a dark mark at the center. He had done this thousands of times.

Fourth morning he lifted his head.

That was it. No arrangement, no money, no thank you. He looked at the lens the way you'd look at someone who finally stopped pretending not to see you. I made one frame. Then a second, because my hands didn't trust the first. The second one is this print.

I don't believe he blessed me. I think he allowed me. There's a difference, and the difference is the whole series.

— Sefa Yamak, Istanbul-based portrait photographer. Varanasi, winter 2018. From the SADHUS series.