Fear in a Handful of Dust

 

“And I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
(T.S. Eliot – American born English Playwright and Poet , 1888-1965)

This picture belongs to the series shot in my street in Varanasi (Benaras) while four men were emptying plaster bags from a truck.
It was very dusty, although they reminded me “butoh” dancers performing with white-body makeup.
This japanese contemporary dance came after the second world war and among several things the choreography is a remembrance of the suffering of Hiroshima’s atomic bomb.
It raises the question of how is it still possible to dance after such a thing and in some ways it is easy to compare this concept of art to those workers living in dust.

Thank you all for your many comments on this set of pictures.

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