Vrindavan In Monochrome

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Having been through almost two weeks of explosive over-saturated colors, I thought it time to work in monochrome.

Vrindavan In Monochrome (or Radhe Radhe) is a gallery of black and white photographs...perhaps an antithesis to the explosive colors of the Holi festival, and is of pilgrims, devotees and dwellers of this holy and sacred city…going along their daily routine.

Whether the widows near their ashrams, the Bengali pilgrims bathing in the Yamuna river and drying their clothes, the Hare Krishna devotees on their daily yatra circling Vrindavan, elderly dwellers basking in the sun or the spiritual “guides” taking the hordes of pilgrims around its thousands of temples…these photographs depict a sliver of what goes on in the holy city on a daily basis…even during Holi.

I didn't take my M9 with me to India this time, and I quite missed it whilst making this type of photography. Some of the photographs in this gallery were made using spot metering and manual settings to cast much of the subject in shadows, and with just traces of light on them. The light during the day in India can be harsh, but we were blessed with a thick fog/mist when walking along a stretch of the yatra, or pilgrim route around Vrindavan.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Radhe! Radhe! is the customary greeting exchanged in Vrindavan during Holi...or perhaps it's exchanged all the time. Radhe is Krishna's consort, his main gopi and is regarded as the incarnation of the Goddess Lakshmi.