A project that highlights the visual report between social realism and euphoric utopianism referencing the visual and material facilitation of socially unifying rituals.
Holi, celebrated mainly in India and other countries with a Hindu population, is an ancient spring festival of new life and fertility. It is amalgamated with various Hindu legends that add local variety and meaning to this energetic and joyous tradition also known as the festival of colours. During Holi, people take to the streets and temples dancing and singing, smearing each other with paint and throwing around coloured powders and dyes in an atmosphere of fun and good humour. For the duration of the festival, distinctions of caste, class, age, and gender are suspended. In Barsana, where these photos of Holi were taken, the celebration includes a ritual that allows women to beat men with sticks but will not let the men retaliate.
Rather than showing a sum of independent persons moving, Korfmann’s new work records people merging into one being. In various places on earth collective rituals are photographed: events sustained by individual euphoria in which colour – or colourful garment – dissolves individuality. The highly aesthetic project reports of social realism and euphoric utopianism, acting in between the global event catalysing a visual surrender and the glocal play catalysing deeper contextual literacy.