Devotion

Palm out, fingers apart, the lines of it dark with river silt and years. I had not asked for a blessing. I am still not sure that is what it was.

He held my eye the whole time. There are people who look at a camera and disappear into it, and people who look at a camera and refuse it — and then there is this. A man who looked straight down the lens and stayed entirely himself. Nothing performed. Nothing given away for free.

The orange had faded to the color of something left in the sun too long. The beads at his chest had been counted so many times the wood had gone smooth in the palm. I noticed these things later, in the frame. In the moment I noticed only the hand, the eyes, and how still everything around us had become.

Two frames. After the second he lowered the hand and looked away, and whatever had been open for those few seconds closed again.

I have made a lot of portraits along the Ganges. This is one of the few where I felt I was the one being read.

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