Varanasi, India · 2018
At Dusk
For six minutes the sun sat directly behind the middle one and turned the edge of everything to fire.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
Three of them, side by side on the flat, legs folded, the white salt going pink underneath. I was far back. Far enough that I could not hear what passed between them, if anything passed at all. Some silences are full and some are just two men too tired to talk. I could not tell which this was and did not need to.
The light did the work. It came low across the ground and lifted the pale shawl of the man in the center until it was the brightest thing for a kilometer. The two beside him went amber. Then the sun dropped another degree, the whole field cooled, and it was over.
I did not move closer. Closer would have made it a different photograph — three men instead of one shape. From back here they were almost a single thing. Three faces sharing one last hour of warmth before the cold came in off the river.
One frame. I have never been able to take it again, and I have stopped trying.
— Sefa Yamak, Istanbul-based portrait photographer. Ganges riverbed, Varanasi, winter 2018. From the SADHUS 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.