Video: New Series of Photo Project "Holy Men" by Joey L.: Varanasi, India
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Young Brooklyn photographer Joey L. continues his longstanding project “Holy Men” with a series of photographs from India. With two close friends and colleagues, he spent a month in Varanasi photographing sadhus - spiritual gurus, ascetics and healers.
Varanasi is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. It is believed that people lived here 3000 years ago or even more. It is the epicenter of Hinduism, and is as meaningful to Hindus as Jerusalem is to Christians or Mecca to Muslims.
Joey started the Holy People project with a series of photographs of Coptic Christians from northern Ethiopia. The theme of the Indian series was sadhus and students of theological schools. Although Coptic monks and sadhus live on different parts of the earth, there is a lot in common in their way of life. Almost every major religious movement gives rise to ascetics - itinerant monks who renounce all earthly blessings, devoting their lives to seeking spiritual liberation. Their reality is subject to mind and spirit, not material objects. Even death is not something to be afraid of, but only a departure from the world of illusion.
Future sadhus should renounce all earthly desires, all worldly attachments, leave home and family and accept austerity. Also, as a sign of renunciation, they refuse personal clothing, food and shelter, and live on what others donate to them. Another part of the ritual is attending your own funeral, which symbolizes the death of the old self and rebirth as a new Sadhu. For many Indians, Sadhus are a living reminder of the divine. They can act as healers to help people get rid of bad energies. Every morning Sadhus rise before dawn and wash themselves with cold water before starting their daily prayers.
Special attention of the photographer was deserved by representatives of the religious movement Aghori (a radical offshoot of sadhus) who practice all kinds of taboo rituals, for example, ritual cannibalism. They drink alcoholic beverages, use human skulls, and meditate at burial sites and incineration sites.
Another important character in Joey's photographs is the Ganges River. flickering in the background, becoming an integral part of the life of holy people. In Indian religions, as well as in secular social life, the Ganges occupies a special, important and sacred place. Indians believe that the waters of the Ganges are sacred, in part because they fall from heaven. This point of view has a completely logical explanation, because the Ganges for the most part consists of melt water from the Himalayan mountains, where it falls from the sky in the form of snow. People believe that bathing in the Ganges washes away sins from a person and brings them closer to liberation in the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.
Despite the fact that the Ganges is notorious for its high degree of pollution (feces, garbage and industrial waste), the river is considered sacred, and many believe that its holiness cannot be tainted by any earthly filth.
Another travel photographer, Diego Arroyo, during a trip to Ethiopia, took a series of portraits of people from the tribes of the Omo River Valley, which is three days' drive from Addis Ababa and remains one of the few territories on our planet where there is still almost primitive way of life.
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