Background

To cut a long story short, people in our region started talking about the festival Navratri, and that we should participate in folk festival. Each day is dedicated to a different color of the goodness Durga. I took this as a starting point for ‘tales of the 9 faces’.

So, there was no concept or idea you had before?

Yes and no. Obviously, I had no clue what the festival was exactly about. But some ideas came into living with the connection of the festival, people and this goodness. It is not a project that describes the festival in a bigger picture, rather it should focus on my own interpretation of what people told to me and what I saw there. Stories about ‘tales of gods’ and stories about a ‘god with 9 different faces’.

Do you remember asking the person for permission to take this picture? 

Ah, well yes. We actually had a longer conversation before and it is from a series of photographs. The people around there were working on a wooden ground and washed clothes. This is not really where my interest was. Here we come back again to the focus on hands, the filigree details in them. And the connection that they worked there mostly with their hands, so, why not focusing on a detail like hands?

These excerpts are based on a conversation between Florian Spring and Matthias Sahli in March 2020