My photographs look at the way people in Bangladesh of all faiths and ethnicities celebrate festivals in order to reach something older and rawer within themselves. The form of their ritual is at times hard to understand, especially when it involves pain or self-mutilation; irrational or barbarous as many such actions might seem to us, even to onlookers at the events themselves, their value to participants and performers is enduring. Such events permit people to maintain a sense of connection to their community, their history, and their environment, thereby also themsleves and a sense of the ever present sacred in their lives. They push people out of their everyday constraints, however violently, towards something greater which nourishes them, towards ecstasy and catharsis. Even though my camera is a product of a fractured modern world, I use it to myself celebrate the renewal of this primordial self, which still rings true.
