It is the black hours before dawn. The boat pushes out into the slow current. The ghats and towers of the ancient city are outlined with dim electric bulbs and small fires. Their glow creates a half circle of light over the river that fades into the black of the sky and the uninhabited sand-dunes of the other bank. It is quiet and I whisper to myself, “You are floating down the Ganges by the banks of Varanasi. You are here.” Continue reading “VARANASI: IT IS THE BLACK HOURS BEFORE DAWN”
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
Ernest Hemingway was talking about writing but I find the idea to be equally true of photography (or any form of art or craft). There are artists who seem to appear, sui generis, from nowhere, without precedent or antecedent though in the end this is a false narrative. There are, indeed, great and original talents, but everyone is influenced by something.
