What are we looking at?

There are some photographs that are not meant to be looked at too closely, or analysed too deeply, lest its magic be ruined.

But how a person interacts with (or interrogates) a photograph is never in the control of the photographer, the collector, the gallery, or the museum.

And so I look.

Feet

Two right feet. Two people, whose feet are drenched in colourful powders, and stained wherever the powders have dissolved. The person on the right is sitting with their legs tucked under their thighs, but angled towards their right, so their right foot is fully and prominently visible to us.

The person on the left is either standing straight or crouching, dressed in cotton pyjamas or a dhoti, that was once white.

It is the festival of Holi, an ancient spring festival where the Colours of India come out to play. It is a spring festival, where some come out to play, and others are assaulted. Bura Na Mano, Holi Hai! Don’t be offended, it’s Holi! I wonder if assault during a festival is a modern phenomenon. I would like to think so, but of course, I’m too old now to believe that.

A photograph can be interrogated, even against its will

A close crop cuts out everything except colours. It lives in an abstraction, – an eternal timelessness of feet and colour, colour and feet. It is stubbornly unhelpful as an image, but it does make me wonder – how did the photographer capture such a beautifully untouched coat of yellow powder on the sole of this foot, amidst the muddy chaos of pink-purple-orange on the ground around it, and the foot next to it? I wonder if the yellow was actually carefully, lovingly, laid just for the photograph.

I look around the archive for other images of Holi, and find six that specifically depict people playing with colours. Only two of them are photographs, and interestingly, Colours of India does not appear. I imagine that I am certainly missing images in my search, but I let it go.