India · 2018
Holi Feet
No face in this one.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
Only the floor, and what ten thousand people leave on it.
I walked into the temple courtyard after the Holi crowd had gone. The colour was still down — powder ground into the stone by the weight of all those feet, blue and red and a hard bright green, and through it the prints themselves, bare heels and toes pressed and lifted and pressed again.
For a few hours that morning the place had been chaos, colour thrown by the fistful, everyone soaked in it. By the time I got there it was silent. Just the evidence. The shape of a dance with the dancers gone home.
I knelt down and made the frame looking straight at the ground. It is the only photograph in this whole series with nobody in it, and somehow it is one of the most crowded.
— Sefa Yamak, Istanbul-based portrait photographer. Vrindavan, spring 2018. From the INDIA series.
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm · Signed & numbered on verso · Certificate of Authenticity included
If this photograph interests you, write to me directly. I'll answer any questions about print sizes, paper, and process. Studio visits in Istanbul are also available.