Viviana Peretti | Camargue Gypsy Pilgrimage

Photo © Viviana Peretti-All Rights Reserved

I sometimes discover a photographer's work that is so interesting that I hurry to post about it as soon as possible, upending the predetermined order of future posts on my blog.

The work of Viviana Peretti is one of those.

So I'm glad to feature Viviana's Gypsy Pilgrimage in La Camargue which she covered so well using her iPhone and the Hispstamatic's Tintype Tinto 1884 lens and the D-Type film pack...which is by far my favorite.

The Gypsy Pilgrimage celebrate the saints Mary-Jacobé and Mary-Salomé, and it is held in Saintes Maries de la Mer, a small village in the heart of the Camargue, South of France. The legend is that a boat landed near the village's site from Palestine, carrying Mary Magdalene, Marie-Jacobé, and Salomé, as well as Lazarus. With them was Sara, whose identity is unclear. There are some who believe that she was the daughter of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ...while others believe she was the personal maid of Marie-Jacobé. As the only dark-skinned woman on the boat, she was embraced by the Romani as their patron saint.

Romani (aka gypsies) from the region carry the the saints' effigies in a long procession to the beach to be blessed in the sea. The procession is not only made of Romani, but of the region's Arlesiennes in their distinctive costume, as well are the Gardians (Camargue's cowboys) and pilgrims.

This ritual's concept reminds me of the Hindu Durga Puja and the Balinese odalan, where effigies are carried to the river or sea to be blessed.

Viviana Peretti is an Italian freelance photographer currently based in Europe. After earning a BA in Anthropology from the University of Rome, she moved to Colombia where she specialized in photojournalism and worked as a freelance photographer for 9 years. In 2010, she graduated in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism from the International Center of Photography, and worked in NYC as a freelance photographer until her recent move to Europe.

She received fellowships and awards from the International Center of Photography, the Joannie M. Chen Fund in New York, the University of Salamanca, the Spanish Embassy in Colombia, the Photo Museum in Bogotá, and the Colombian Ministry of Culture. In 2010, she was selected for the Eddie Adams Workshop (Barnstorm XXIII), and has been published in a number of international newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, the New York Magazine, BBC, CNN, Le Journal de la Photographie and L'Espresso.

John Horniblow | Imilchil Wedding Festival

The Imilchil moussem (festival) is held in Morocco's High Atlas, and is all about livestock and finding a partner. It's also known as Souk Aamor Agdoud N’Oulmghenni, which is a tongue-twister for most of non Berber speakers. It represents the annual meeting of the large and important tribal Berber families of Aït Haddidou, Aït Morghad, Aït Izdeg and Aït Yahia.

There are two versions of stories explaining the birth of the festival. The Berber version tells the legend of two young people from different feuding tribes who fell in love but akin to Romeo and Juliet, they were forbidden to see each other by their families. The grief of unrequited love led them to their deaths. The legend tells that they cried themselves to death, creating the neighboring deep alpine lakes of Isli (his) and Tislit (hers), near Imilchil.

Another version is that the lovers drowned themselves in the separate lakes. The Imilchil Marriage Festival was founded as a commemoration of the lovers' death, and provides the opportunity to unmarried Berbers, particularly women trapped at altitude for most of the year, to look over and mingle with prospective spouses. They sing, dance and flirt, and available men must wear white turbans and their female opposites wear the family silver.

Another version, but much less romantic explanation, is that Morocco's French past colonial administrators assembled the transitory Berbers to register their births, deaths and marriages.

John Horniblow tells us "small groups of young Berber women dressed in traditional finery and roughly, woven woollen robes distinctive to each family tribe, some with berber fibules (amulets), eyes rimmed with heavy black kohl, and intricately hennaed hands, amble through the commerce of the souk talking, flirting with or being approached by the potential bachelors trying to strike up meaningful conversation. The wary eyes of elder relatives, looking on, following them protectively at a furtive distance."

John Horniblow is the founder and editor of Photojournale and publisher of Photojournale Connections Across A Human Planet. John is both photographer and film maker with his photographic work featuring in Geo Mundo, Penguin books and People ( Time Inc.) . He also has worked on production managing and assisting Frans Lanting on assignment with National Geographic and has also produced directed and shot documentary and short films featuring on SBSTV , Channel Seven and at International Film Festivals.

Ninth Angkor Photo Festival 2013

The 9th Angkor Photo Festival is scheduled for November 23-30, in Siem Reap, Cambodia.It's longest-running international photography festival in Southeast Asia, will showcase the work of over 130 photographers, half of which are from Asia.

The week-long event will feature daily evening outdoor slideshow projections as well as 8 indoor and outdoor print exhibitions.

The 2013 Program is curated by the festival's program coordinator, Françoise Callier. In addition, Shahidul Alam (Director of Chobi Mela - Bangladesh) and Jean François Leroy (Director of Visa pour l’Image – France) will be its guest curators.

Some of the photographers who will showcase their work are Edwin Koo, Marylise Vigneau, John Vink, Patrick Aventurier, Kumi Takahashi, Gali Tibbon, Sankar Sarkar, Dina Oganova, Binh Dang, Abir Abdulla, Subrata Biswas, Antoine Raab and many others.

I was privileged to attend the Angkor Photo Festival in November 2011 and one of my photo essays The Possessed of Mira Datar was featured at the festival. It was an absolute delightful experience to be part of such an event, and the gracious hospitality of Francoise Callier and Jean-Yves Navel (the Festival Director) was instrumental in making it such success. I have no doubt that the festival in November 2013 will equally be as wonderful.

The Frame | Holi |The Widows

Photo © AP / Manish Swarup-All Rights Reserved

Here's another installment of photographs from the Lathmar Holi and Holi festivals in Nandgaon and Vrindavan; the colors of which ought to sate anyone's color appetite for weeks to come. 

This time, these photographs are featured by the always impressive The Frame, the photo blog of The Sacramento Bee. It's quite an extensive gallery of photographs by Manish Swarup, Bikas Das, and Altaf Qadri.

Photo © AP/Manish Swarup-All Rights Reserved

I find the above photograph just hilarious! Even the woman's teeth have been colored by the dye and colored water, while the one next to her has preemptively and judiciously covered her face with a veil.

Photo © Vivek Prakash-All Rights Reserved

However, more important than color is the fact that this year for the first time, the festival of Holi was celebrated by the widows and other abandoned women living in Vrindavan. In a departure from an horrific tradition (in some parts of India) which deems Hindu widows as pariahs, hundreds of widows gathered to observe Holi and to cover each other with flower petals and colored powder.

More of the widows enjoying their first Holi can be seen in WSJ India.

For my own work on the plight of the Vrindavan widows, see White Shadows.

In Focus | Rio's Carnival 2013

Photo © Felipe Dana/AP-All Rights Reserved

In Focus, the photo blog of The Atlantic is on a roll. Following its featuring of the 2013 Sony World Photo Awards a few days ago, it now features gorgeous photographs of Rio's Carnival of 2013.

In Rio, more than 72,000 spectators watched the spectacle of samba school floats, dancers, and extravagant costumes during Carnival. More people took part in the numerous street parties, dancing and drinking for hours.

Attending Rio's Carnival is on my bucket list for as long as I remember. While living in Barcelona many years ago, I saw a beautiful billboard with an advert for Varig (at the time the only international airlines in Brazil) encouraging people to travel to Rio for the Carnival....and this reminded in me of my appreciation for Brazilian music...mostly bossa nova and samba. Some years before, I had watched -more than once- the French movie 'Un Homme Une Femme"whose one of its songs was the beautiful Samba Saravah (aka Samba da Bencao by the legendary Vinicius de Moraes), and even before that, I would listen to the music of Baden Powell, Stan Getz, Jorge Ben, Gilberto Gil...and of course, Joao Gilberto.

Carnival was introduced by the Portuguese to Brazil around 1850. The elite settlers from Europe would throw class and custom aside, dressing in the poorer clothing of commoners, while the commoners donned the fine garments of royalty. Native Brazilians eventually joined the festivities, and early 20th century, the beats of the samba joined the melting pot of music from several European cultures.

Gary Draluck | Burning Man

Photo © Gary Draluck-All Rights Reserved

"Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind." www.burningman.com

For those who are not familiar with Burning Man (I had heard of it, and seen some of its photographic coverage, but not much more),  Gary Draluck attended the festivals a few times and features many of his candid photographs on his website. It will give you an excellent overview of this unique festival, which rivals many others in terms of exoticism. Having viewed Gary's photo essay makes me wonder if the Burning Man is not our reply to India's Kumbh Mela.

The Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada. The event begins on the last Monday in August, and ends on the first Monday in September, coinciding with the American Labor Day holiday.

It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on the week's Saturday evening. It's described by many participants as an experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance.

I met Gary during the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Chiang Mai last summer. He's a California-based photographer, and is enamored by tango (as I am). 

The Frame | Voodoo Festival

Photo © AP / Jon Gambrell-Courtesy SacBee's The Frame

The Frame, the Sacramento Bee's photo blog, features photographs of the exciting Benin's Voodoo Festival. This is certainly one festival I would have loved to attend, but it completely fell off my radar. Perhaps next year? It appears it's held every January 10th. There are also a number of travel companies that can arrange for tourists (oh, no!!) to attend the festival.

But who knows? Perhaps a future destination for one of The Travel Photographer's Photo Expeditions-Workshops?

Ouidah, on the Atlantic coast of Benin, is where voodoo began, and the launching point for its voyage to the Americas with the boatloads of African slaves. It is also the mecca for the spirits and gods worshipped by practitioners of Voodoo, or Vodun, a recognised religion in this former French colony in West Africa that is home to 9 million people.

According to the accompanying write up on The Frame, local banks and the post office closed as Ouidah celebrated this annual festival,; which is increasingly drawing curious foreigners. With its mix of beliefs and traditions, the Voodoo practiced here shows both a clash of cultures and the ability for ancient traditional beliefs to adapt to modern life.

Voodoo, or Orisha, as it is practiced today, originated many hundred years ago among the Yoruba people who live in the region of modern-day Togo, Benin and parts of Nigeria. Followers of voodoo believe in an unapproachable god and an array of spirits who serve as intermediaries. Slaves, forced to leave Benin's sandy shores in their millions, took such beliefs to the U.S. and the islands of the West Indies, where they spread and formed the basis of religions like Candomblé, Macumba, Santería and Umbanda.

Chris McGrath | Thaipusam

Photo © Chris McGrath-All Rights Reserved

I've posted about Thaipusam a few times already, but I never tire to view the varying angles and scenes that various photographers have featured on their websites.

Chris McGrath is one of the photographers who attended the version of this Hindu festival in
Singapore, rather than Malaysia where it's held annually 13 kilometres outside its capital city, Kuala Lumpur.

In Singapore though, the preparations for Thaipusam begin early in the morning at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple in Little India where the devotees start to perform the necessary rituals. Once these done, the procession moves through central Singapore to another Hindu temple about 2 miles away. The festival occurs on the full moon during the Tamil month of Thai, which occured on February 7, 2012.

On the day of the festival, devotees shave their heads and perform various acts of devotion, notably carrying heavy burdens, and carry out acts of self mortification by piercing their skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers and sharp hooks. 

Chris McGrath is a staff photographer with Getty Images, specializing in editorial and commercial assignments. His images are published in Stern, Newsweek, Time, Sports Illustrated, The Independent, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, ESPN the magazine, The Guardian, L'Equipe and on daily news and sport websites worldwide. His work has also been recognized with many industry awards including, POYi, NPPA, CHIPP, AIPP, The Atlanta Photojournalism contest, PX3 and the New York Press Photographers Association.

Thaipusam is on my bucket-list, but until I get the time and photograph it myself, I'm happy to feature images of this festival from various other photographers.

Ah! Kumbh Mela Time

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Quite a number of photographers, some friends and acquaintances, are gearing up to join the millions of Hindu pilgrims who will travel to Allahabad at the end of January and February, and document this unique religious event. I'm also certain that a number of photographers will offer workshops there...some charging an arm and a leg, others not so much.

This brings back memories of my attendance of the Maha Kumbh Mela of 2001, which was in the estimate of many the "mother of all Kumbh Melas" as it occurs only every 144 years.

The Ardh (half) Kumbh Mela is celebrated every six years at Haridwar and Allahabad, the Purna (complete) Kumbh takes place every twelve years, at four places Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain, and Nashik. The Maha Kumbh Mela which comes after 12 'Purna Kumbh Melas', or 144 years, is held at Allahabad.

By the way, isn't it surprising that Allahabad, or city of Allah/God as it was named by Mughal emperor Akbar, is the city where the most Hindu of all religious pilgrimages is held? And that's because it's the site of where the Yamuna and Ganges meet, and it was the birthplace of the Vedas and the grand epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

What struck me the most while photographing in 2001 were two facts: the overwhelming number of people (from charlatans and con men, religious freaks, and the genuinely devout Hindu pilgrims), and the surprising organization and efficiency of the police and organizers. It is said that about 60 million people attended the 2001 Maha Kumbh Mela.

I also recall how photojournalists were too aggressive in covering the bathing ceremony of the Naga Sadhus, and some of them were severely beaten and hospitalized. This, of course, meant that the rest of us had to surreptitiously take pictures when the police ordered us not to shoot during a Naga Sadhu procession (see above photograph). I had a press pass at the time, and it allowed me to circumvent the long lines, but that was about it.

In expectation of seeing photo essays on the event, here's the BBC's photographs of pilgrims already arriving in Allahabad.

The auspicious bathing dates of the 2013 Kumbh Mela are here.

Reuters Full Focus' Best of 2012

Photo © Reuters/Rupak de Chowdhuri-All Rights Reserved

Yes, like you I did a double take when I saw this photograph on Reuters Full Focus blog as one of the photographs that made it in its Best of 2012. And yes, once again it's that time of year when every news outlet in the world decides to feature its "best" images made during the past 12 months.

Its caption tells us that it's of a Hindu devotee attending the "Chadak" ritual at Krishanadevpur village, which is north of Kolkata earlier this year, when hundreds of devotees attend the ritual to worship the Hindu deity Lord Shiva, on the last day of the Bengali calendar year. The Chadak ritual includes a number of self-mortification acts performed by devotees.

The caption also tells us the photographer was unable to check the veracity of the action of this man.

I find it very hard to believe that this is for real. The red turban is suspiciously too low on the man's neck, and there are various tricks that magicians mimic such a horrifying thing.

I've attended various rituals (such the one of the Kali workshippers in Kodungallur where they beat their forefronts with swords until blood gushes out), and I know that I'd certainly circle this devotee to photograph him back and front, and ascertain the trickery (or not). I also find it surprising that there are no other photograph of this fellow other than this one. There are photographs of other people with hooks in their backs, but none of this one.

The photographer, Rupak de Chowdhuri, a photographer with Reuters, Corbis, etc. tells us that he started taking his pictures from different angles, and tried talking to this man to get more information but he didn’t utter a word.

In any case, this is what is called a "monumental pain in the neck".

Whatever it is, the rest of the photographs are also worth a look. Some are really very good...others not so much.

Kris Bailey's Durga Puja: The Spirit of Kolkata

"Durga Puja is a celebration of the Mother Goddess, and the victory of the revered warrior Goddess Durga over the evil buffalo demon Mahishasura."

Kris Bailey recently sent me her audio slideshow made during my Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo~Expedition & Workshop™ which took place a little over a year ago (how time flies!!!).

It's Durga Puja time right now in the wonderful city of Kolkata. Kolkata, the city that to my mind epitomizes India more than any other city in India.

You ought to watch it as it encapsulate very well the tradition of this annual religious event and its rituals, especially as it is the most important observance in West Bangal. I had encouraged the participants in this workshop to produce monochrome photo essays, and Kris's work is unquestionably one of the best I've seen so far.

Apart from being an attorney in Northern California, Kris is a photographer who's keenly interested in South and South East Asia, and is particularly attracted to unusual rituals and religious festivals. She's already been on two of my most intense photo expeditions workshops, and that doesn't seem to deter her in the least.

You may want to drop by her Vimeo page where she has 4 videos of her audio slideshows, and by her blog, on which you'll find examples of her still photography in India and elsewhere.

Anthony Pond: Faith, Frenzy...

Readers interested in unique religious and cultural events will like this. I guarantee it. Not the faint-hearted though.

Following his participation in my The Oracles Of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop in March, Anthony Pond has been a frequent contributor to The Travel Photographer blog, and his Faith, Frenzy multimedia essay is the most recent of his many audio slideshows I've already featured.

Not only is it his most recent, but I wager it's his best production so far. Tony used a Canon 5DMk2, audio recordings were made with a Zoom H1, and was edited in Lightroom, Audacity, and Final Cut Pro. I'm not a huge fan of merging stills with video footage, but Tony succeeded in merging these two mediums quite seamlessly.

The Oracles of Kodungallur celebrate their festival in the Bhagawati temple, which usually occurs between the months of March and April. It involves sacrifice of cocks and shedding of the Oracles own blood, to appease the goddess Kali and her demons who are said to relish blood offerings.

Anthony Pond worked for more than two decades in the criminal courts in California as an attorney for the Public Defender’s Office. Now pursuing his passion for travel and photography, he travels repeatedly to South East Asia and India, amongst other places, to capture life, the people and the culture.

Foundry Photojournalism Workshop: It Starts!

Well, it started this afternoon...the 5th Foundry Photojournalism Workshop held in Chiang Mai was launched by its co-founder Eric Beecroft , and with a lovely keynote address by Maggie Steber.

The classes will be held at the impressive facilities provided by Chiang Mai University's Faculty of Fine Arts....computer rooms, overhead projectors, amphitheater, you name it...it has.

My first class Multimedia In Storytelling starts Monday morning, and I am to teach how to produce audio slideshows that rival in quality and content more elaborate multimedia productions, using their own images and audio generated in the field, and to produce cogent photo stories under the simulation of publishing deadlines. Some of them have already discussed their project ideas with me, and are quite interesting.

Monday evening, I'm on tap to show my audio slideshow "The Cult of Durga".

Dan Kitwood: Benin Voodoo

Photo Dan Kitwood/Getty Images-Courtesy The Guardian

Can anything dispel the auguries of a Friday 13th better than a Benin Voodoo festival?

Being fascinated by such religious festivals and rituals (the more obscure the better), I was glad to have seen Dan Kitwood's gallery of a Benin Voodoo festival in The Guardian, which also led me to his website/blog on which he lays out further captivating photographs (with better resolution) of Voodoo which also has a slideshow at the bottom of the post.

As seen in the above photograph, the costumes are incredibly colorful...perhaps rivaling the Bhutanese dancers at tsechus in their elaborateness and intricacy of their embroidered designs .

In the tiny West African nation of Benin, Voodoo is and remains the state religion. Incredibly, voodoo has officially been a national religion of Benin since 1996, where more than 60% of the people are said to follow its traditions. Slaves from this corner of Africa brought the religion to the New World, most notably to Haiti.

And while Christianity and Islam in Benin are also practiced, voodoo still influences them. In the voodoo tradition, there's a supreme god, Mahu, and a number of smaller gods or spirits, with whom humans can interact.

Dan Kitwood is a UK photojournalist who, after completing a degree in Fine Art, traveled around South East Asia, Australasia and South America, which triggered a passion for photography. After two years working for the South West News he joined Getty Images in London.

Luj Moarf: Thaipusam

The Hindu festival of Thaipusam is about faith, endurance, mortification and penance. In Malaysia, it's an intensely devotional event which can stretch for 3 or 4 days, and is attended by about a million and a half people each year. It's a time for Hindus of all castes and cultures to be grateful to Murugan, a son of Shiva.

It was brought to Malaysia in the 1800s by Indian immigrants working on Malaysian rubber estates and in its government offices. The festival is celebrated mostly by the Tamil community, and commemorates the occasion when Parvati gave Murugan a spear to vanquish the evil demon Soorapadam.

On the day of the festival, devotees shave their heads and undertake a pilgrimage along a set route while engaging in various acts of devotion, notably carrying various types of heavy burdens, while others may carry out acts of self mortification by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers and sharp hooks. Not for the faint of heart.

Faith-Thaipusam is a 5 minutes video by a photographer called Luj Moarf who describes himself as a traveller, wandering into the world discovering places and people.

Some of the rituals followed during Thaipusam, including the red garments worn by some of the devotees, reminded me of The Oracles of Kodungallur.

Kieran Doherty: Solstice (Druids & Pagans!)

Photo © Kieran Doherty-All Rights Reserved

I really should've posted this yesterday...

Kieran Doherty thought of me as he finished his new gallery Solstice, whose photographs he thought would be suitable for The Travel Photographer blog. He was right...they are.

He has been covering the druids and revelers at Stonehenge during the summer and winter solstices over the past 10 years, and this gallery consists of 31 large sized color photographs of the scenes in that famed site.

Stonehenge is an ancient pre-historic site, and its well known stone monument is believed to have been constructed anywhere from 3000 BC to 2000 BC. It has been a place of worship and celebration at the time of Summer Solstice since time immemorial. In summer, pagans and druids make it a ritual to witness the sunrise on the longest day of the year at the prehistoric site marking the event with unusual rituals and religious ceremonies.

Kieran Doherty is a photojournalist whose career started with the Reuters News Pictures service in London. He remained with Reuters 15 years until resigning his position to undertake commissions in 2008. His photography has taken him to almost every part the world and his work has appeared in all the major international journals and magazines including Time, Newsweek, Der Spiegel, Stern, National Geographic, The New York Times and The Sunday Times magazine.

Ayush Ranka; Koovagam (Hijra) Festival

Photo © Ayush Ranka- All Rights Reserved

"Religious festivals in India are typically explosive affairs, but few pack the surreal punch of Koovagam." 

And so begins a three part article in the India Ink section of The New York Times, which is accompanied by the photographs of Ayush Ranka, an independent photojournalist based in Bangalore.

Ayush just attended the Koovagam Festival and returned with a photo essay (33 photographs) of this annual religious festival for hijras, India’s male-to-female transgendered people.

The festival celebrates the myth of Lord Krishna taking female form in order to marry Aravan, a warrior who fought the Mahabharata War. It is in Koovagam, a small village in Tamil Nadu, that a large number of transgendered people come to worship Aravan, and celebrate the night when Krishna took the form of a woman to become his wife, and then weep in mourning at the news of his death.

Hijras have a long recorded history in the Indian subcontinent, and their culture draws upon the traditions of several religions. However, their goodess is Bahuchara Mata with a temple in Western Gujarat.

Ayush Ranka was selected as one of the top ten short-listed photographers of the Redux Scholarship for the 2009 Foundry Photojournalism Workshop,  and his clients include New York Times, Volvo, UVEX (Germany), Azim Premji Foundation, GQ (India), Financial Times Magazine, Harvard Business Review and Femina Magazine.

Update: Thirunakkara Festival

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy

Yesterday saw the penultimate day of the Thirunakkara Festival in Kottayam, which was attended by thousands of worshippers, and is known as Pullivetta. It was a spectacular spectacular event with phenomenal pageantry including a parade of caparisoned elephants and the exchange of parasols.

Getting some of us through the throngs of people was made possible by extremely helpful policemen, who wanted us to get to the best vantage points, and as close to the elephants as possible.

The drumming and sound of cymbals were so loud that I risked rupturing my ear-drums!!!

Mark Coughlan: Maha Shivatri

Photo © Mark Coughlan-All Rights Reserved

Well, I'll be on my way to India in about 24 hours...and what better way to start the trip than by featuring Mark Coughlan's Maha Shivatri's photo gallery?!

A warning though...and perhaps in time of breakfast for my US-based readers. If you have no stomach for viewing ash-smeared sadhus with their testicles lifting piles of stones. look elsewhere. For instance, Mark's Portraits Of A Saint photo gallery, which is much tamer in comparison and consists of the sadhus' portraits. Not a testicle in sight there.

Maha Shivratri is a Hindu festival celebrated every year in reverence of Lord Shiva, and in common with many Hindu religious festivals, sees pilgrims and devotees bathe at sunrise, preferably in the Ganges, and carry pots of water to the temples to bathe the Shiva "linga",  and offer prayers to the sun, Vishnu and Shiva. Unmarried women pray for a husband like Shiva, considered to be the ideal husband.

Mark Coughlan is a documentary travel photographer specializing in global social issues and world events/festivals, who traveled diverse countries such as Myanmar (Burma), Mongolia, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, China, Cambodia and Bolivia amongst others. He photographed some of the world’s greatest festivals and events including two Maha Kumbh Mela festivals (India), Maha Shivaratri (India & Nepal), and Nadam (Mongolia).

The Big Picture: Lathmar Holi

Photo © Adnan Abidi/Reuters-All Rights Reserved

I know....I've featured photographs of Lathmar Holi and of the main Holi festival a little too enthusiastically over the past few weeks, but the color is overpowering...and I'm in grey London on my way to India in a couple of days. I'm giving Holi a miss...landing in Delhi a day later, so I'm making up by posting really phenomenal photographs by Adnan Abidi, Manan Vatsyayana, and Kevin Frayer who've done a really great job of documenting this "pre-Holi Holi".

The Big Picture photo blog featured 22 of these photographs....each one better than the other.

Photo © Kevin Frayer-All Rights Reserved