The Federation of Self-Employees Market, in the Colombo district of Pettah, seems to attract a fair share of the city’s detritus, trying to scrape out a living in a country without much safety nets for the very poor. This gentleman earns a meagre daily wage selling cloth shopping bags to shoppers at the market, hoping they will switch from the usual plastic “siri-siri” bags that are choking Sri Lanka’s environment. He quietly asked me to take his picture. April 2018.
A monk descends Ritigala Mountain where, in the 9th century, King Sena of Anuradhapura built a monastery for the Pansakulikas or “Rag Robes”, a particularly ascetic order of Buddhist monks who fashioned their robes from the shrouds of the dead, scavenged from graves and funeral pyres.Shot in December 2017. Continue reading “In the Steps of the Pansakulikas”→
Galboda Gnanissara Thera, popularly known as Podi Hamuduruwo (Junior Monk), the chief prelate of the Gangaramaya Temple, in Colombo, sits with a calculator in the midst of his fantastic collection of artefacts and bric-a-brac from all over the world. The contents of this collection range from dozens of whole elephant tusks to cheap Japanese film cameras, classic cars from Germany and India to antique swords from forgotten cities, a 105mm howitzer shell to musty Middle Eastern carpets, and everything in between. The Gangaramaya Temple, which looks like a badly organised museum is, in many ways, a representation of everything that Buddhism is not, but which it has become in Sri Lanka. Christmas Eve, 2017.
Shot on assignment for Serendib, the inflight magazine of Sri Lankan Airlines. My story on Anuradhapura, ‘The First Kingdom of Lanka‘, appeared in the February 2017 issue.
Son of the Morning Light 