Morning Rituals

Varanasi, India, 2018

Varanasi is a city organized around the processing of life, death, and salvation. One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, it functions as a crossing point where, in Hindu belief, death breaks the cycle of rebirth. To die here, to be cremated along the banks of the Ganges, is to achieve moksha. That belief shapes the city's architecture, the flow of bodies, and the rhythms of the riverbanks long before sunrise.

Every morning, the city resets.

I arrived in Varanasi a month after documenting Hurricane Maria's aftermath in Puerto Rico. Nine months after the storm, blue tarps still covered rooftops. They had become permanent architecture of neglect. I needed to see a place where systems—social, spiritual, physical—had endured for centuries.

I began my days early, walking the ghats as light first touched the water. The rhythmic slap of wet fabric against stone echoed from the water's edge. Water buffalo cooled themselves in the river. Men bathed while barbers worked methodically, the soft scrape of the blade marking the start of the day. These routines keep the city moving.

The Ganges functions as the city's main artery. From an environmental perspective, the river is in crisis. Yet faith sees something else. Collective belief sustains the river's role, allowing ritual to continue even where modern safeguards fall short. Infrastructure here extends beyond pipes and filtration plants.

Late one afternoon, I was walking through the narrow corridors near the burning ghats. I stopped to photograph a quiet scene: a dog beside a man resting on a stone step, a barber completing a shave in the background. Moments later, heavy footsteps filled the passageway. A group of men moved quickly past me, carrying a body on their shoulders. There was no hesitation, no delay. No room for a bottleneck. Whatever needed to happen next had to happen before the sun disappeared.

The city demanded throughput, and the people provided it.

I photographed this work in black and white to strip away the noise. India is often exoticized through its vibrancy. But color anchors images to a specific time. Black and white emphasizes the structural geometry of the ghats, the texture of stone, the gestures repeated for generations. It allows these rituals to exist outside of spectacle.

In contrast to my work in Puerto Rico and Guatemala, where I document what happens when systems fracture, Varanasi showed me something else: a place that refuses to break.

Each morning, the system resets. And life continues.