Varanasi, India · 2018
The Welcome
One of them was already laughing when I lifted the camera.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
The other put his hand up — not to stop me, to wave.
I had been walking past the temple and they caught me looking. Two of them done up in the heavy festival paint, flowers and lines worked all across the face. In a lot of places that look gets pointed at tourists for money. Not here. Here it was just the two of them, deep in some joke I had walked into the middle of, happy to let a stranger stand in it for a second.
I do not know what was funny. I will never know. The man on the right kept his hand raised, palm toward me, fingers spread, more greeting than gesture. The man on the left tipped his head back and gave the whole thing to the afternoon.
I made one frame while they were both still turned my way. Then it moved, the way everything moves in that city, the joke carrying them off down the lane and out of the picture.
Some encounters along the Ganges are a negotiation. This one cost nothing, and I have kept it longer than most of the ones that did.
— Sefa Yamak, Istanbul-based portrait photographer. 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.