India · 2018
The Water
The water was already in the air when I made the frame — a whole sheet of it coming off his head and arm, lit up against the dark stone behind.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
A public bathing place, open to the street, the kind of spot where men wash without walls in a city that has no room to be private about it. He tipped the metal pail over his head and the water broke into a hundred bright pieces and hung there for the half-second a camera needs.
There was nothing ceremonial in it. No ritual, no audience he cared about. Just a man getting clean, a thing he had done ten thousand times, his whole body leaning into the cold of it.
I made one frame in that half-second and have never been able to decide whether the subject is the man or the water. Some mornings I think it is the light.
— Sefa Yamak, Istanbul-based portrait photographer. Mumbai, 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.