Tilby Vattard, KASHI, 2023

Varanasi, formerly known as Kashi, is a thousand-year-old city in northern India on the Ganges plain. A sacred fire has been burning here, carrying the bodies of the dead in its smoke for more than three thousand years. In this inextricable labyrinth of ruined temples and palaces, the boundaries of reality seem to dissolve, and through a fissure a mystical world, a daily life woven with enchantments, appears. From 2014 to 2019, the author traveled regularly to produce a series that, far from being a faithful description of reality, bears witness to his inner mythology.