In this series I will focus on one specific quality of our sun. These photos concentrate on the nurturing quality of this star, a coming home induced by the warmth of the sun’s rays, and a providing and a letting be in its constant and punctual presence. The sun is too bright to be looked at directly, so we always need some kind of a filter, like a haze.
This image is an evening shot, about 1/2 hour before sundown, taken in a riverbed close to Dehradun, India in mid-February 2016. The haze is a result from evaporated water and a very fine dust.
The one was taken on January 14th 2016 on the roof of Leadbeater Chambers in Adyar, on the first morning of the four-day Pongal festival, which in some states in southern India is known as Bhogi.
It is the last day in which the sun moves south before the start of Uttarayana, the time when the sun starts to move northwards after the winter equinox. The haze in this image is actually smoke. To mark this auspicious change in the seasons, it is a day of cleaning and cleansing; old clothes and other unused items are thrown away, marking the start of new life. At dawn, whole neighborhoods often light a bonfire with logs of wood, solid fuels and wooden furniture and other waste items that are no longer useful. The idea is to get rid of old things and concentrate on change and transformation that the change in the seasons marked by Pongal signifies.
This last image is a regular sunset in Southern India, again taken on the roof of Leadbeater Chambers in Adyar.
All photos © Richard Dvořák