Varanasi, India · 2018
The Prow
The sky that morning was the color of cold metal, and he stood at the very front of the boat as if he had been set there to hold the whole thing down.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
Arms folded. Face forward. Bare feet on the wet white wood of the bow. Behind him the ghats of Varanasi ran along the far bank the way they have for longer than anyone can prove, stone and temple climbing up out of the water.
The boatman told me he did this every morning. Same hour, same place at the prow, before the river filled with people. I did not entirely believe him and it did not matter whether it was true. The picture I wanted was a small upright figure in a great deal of grey water and sky, and that is what was in front of me.
He did not look at the camera. He had no reason to. He was facing where the boat was going.
This is the last frame in the series and the only one where the man is almost too far away to read. I put it at the end on purpose. After all the faces, a man with his back half-turned, going across.
— Sefa Yamak, Istanbul-based portrait photographer. Ganges River, Varanasi, winter 2018. From the SADHUS series.
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm · Signed & numbered on verso · Certificate of Authenticity included
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