India · 2017
The Hand
His hand came up to his eye in the middle of everything, and the photograph is the hand, not the face.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
We had been at it a while. He had been generous — holding still, letting it run long, the elaborate dotted paint across his face going slightly to seed in the heat. Then something caught in his eye and the hand came up to deal with it, rings on two fingers, and for a moment the careful sitting fell apart into something completely ordinary.
That is the moment I wanted. Not the pose he had arranged for me but the small human break in it — a man rubbing his eye, the way anyone rubs an eye, in the middle of being a holy man in front of a stranger.
The one eye still showing looked straight at me through the gap. He did not stop me. He understood, I think, that the interruption was the better picture.
— Sefa Yamak, Istanbul-based portrait photographer. Varanasi, winter 2017. 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.