The Extraordinary in the Ordinary

“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer.
You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things.
But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.”
(David Bailey – English fashion and portrait photographer, b.1938)

This picture was shot in a little village near Varanasi (Benaras) where a few workers of the Red Haloteam live.
When I come and visit the families I enjoy taking pictures of the ordinary countryside life which I find extraordinary as it reminds me a few images from old Indian movies I used to watch when I was a teenager.
Time has passed living fragments of nostalgia and the illusion that hours, months or years could stop over there…

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LAURENT GOLDSTEIN Photography

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Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
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Memories & Dreams

“We all have our time machines.
Some take us back, they’re called memories.
Some take us forward, they’re called dreams.”
(Jeremy Irons – British Actor, b.1948)

And sometimes time machines are mixing memories and dreams in the old Kashi…
Nearby Alamgir Mosque the milkman was riding a bicycle in the narrow streets of this part of Varanasi (Benaras) in order to deliver a lady who was waiting in the shadow of a door.
The summer heat was already loading down the atmosphere…

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© All photographs are copyrighted and all rights reserved. 
Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.

A Wisp of Smoke

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“There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.”
(Vincent van Gogh – Dutch Painter, 1853-1890)

This picture was shot early in the morning in a narrow street of old Kashi which was not far away from the Ganges.
Those men were emerging from the smoke as if they had to leave a dream and carry on reality.
Dreams and reality melt in eternal Varanasi (Benaras)…

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Composed of Nows

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“Forever is composed of nows.
‘Tis not a different time
Except for Infiniteness
And Latitude of Home

From this – experienced Here
Remove the Dates – to These
Let Months dissolve in further Months
And Years – exhale in Years

Without Debate – or Pause
Or Celebrated Days
No different Our Years would be
From Anno Dominies”
(Emily Dickinson – American Poet, 1830-1886)

This is a glimpse of eternity captured one morning at Scindia ghat along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras)…

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At work

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Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.

“The oldest living city in the world”.

In India, the word “bike” generally means motorbike, and “cycle” means bicycle.

Those bicycles are not ordinary ones.
They belong to the people who are working with me, to those men who sometimes ride for 22 Km twice a day in order to come to our workshop.
This workshop means a lot to all of us as it allows us to live but it also allows most of the people there to send their kids to school, to have a place to stay, to give to their families medical care whenever they need some.

This is a place where all religions have to be together, where there is no more caste system (jati), where we all have the same values, where one depends on the other because there we are no more individuals but a one and only team.
Season after season we became stronger, we learned a lot from eachothers.
There we are all sharing the same values of brotherhood, of respect and of love.
Day by day I keep on learning from all of them and I love to see those bicycles on the wall of my workshop every morning when I come to work there.

“Like” the RED HALO page on Facebook and join this amazing human adventure in Varanasi,www.facebook.com/redhalo.in

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