Varanasi: The City That Photographs You Back

A few days ago, one of my recent Kolkata X Varanasi workshop attendees, Mercedes Armella ( IG - mercedes_armella_photo ), posted her first set of images from Varanasi. In the caption, she wrote: "Varanasi is not just a place, it's a living ritual landscape." I read it twice. Not because it was surprising, but because it was exactly right. And because I have been photographing this city for more than eight years and never quite found those words myself.

Her Instagram caption read:

Her Instagram post, which inspired me to write this Substack post.

Here are a few photographs she made during her time in the Holy city of Varanasi.

Six years of hosting workshops here has shown me something consistent. Attendees come from across the world, Europe, Australia, the USA, the UK and whatnot. Many have never been to India before. And without exception, every single one of them arrives slightly overwhelmed and leaves with something they cannot easily explain. They feel connected to the city almost immediately. Some feel amazed. Some, strangely, feel relieved. As if Varanasi permitted them to slow down and actually feel something, they had been moving too fast to notice.

For me, it is no different, even after eight years. Every time I come back with a camera, the city still does the same thing to me. It pulls you away from thinking too much about your frame and forces you to just be present. That has never changed. And I think that is the answer to why photographers leave here changed, Varanasi doesn’t just sit there and wait to be photographed. It looks back at you. It asks you something.

The above two frames are from the Ganga Aarti ceremony, unchanged, just as it was when I first witnessed it, and just as it remains today.

This is what I mean when I talk about the surface of a photograph. Most of the time, we think a photograph is simply about what we saw, the ghat at dawn, the lamp, the river. But the surface of the image is holding more than that. It is holding how you felt standing there. The moment just before you pressed the shutter. The sounds around you that the camera couldn't record. All of that leaves a trace, even if you can't point to exactly where it is in the frame.

These frames hold faces that feel like the purest form of photography—raw, honest, and untouched.

When I look at photographs made in Varanasi, by myself, by my workshop attendees, by anyone who has spent real time there, I can usually sense who was fully present and who was just moving through. The photographs look different. Not technically, but in some quieter way that is harder to describe.

A familiar scene for many Indians, yet a deeply powerful moment to witness, and to document.

A scene that defines the spirit, the Hindu flag standing tall, symbolising the eternal rhythm of the city, rising from the burning ghats of Manikarnika Ghat.

I think this is something you can actually work on as a photographer. The surface of your photograph gets richer the more you allow yourself to be affected by what you are shooting. Not emotionally performing for the camera, but genuinely letting the place or the person in front of you matter to you in that moment. When that happens, something shifts in how you see, how you wait, and ultimately what you capture. The photograph starts to carry that with it.

Varanasi just makes it harder to avoid. The city has a way of getting inside the frame, whether you invited it or not.

A photo from the biggest festival of Varanasi city - Dev Diwali

Batuks from Varanasi: Young minds who aim to become priests.

Till next time,

Shivam