Background information

"A revised and expanded edition of the iconic book published twenty years earlier that established Michael ACKERMAN as a major figure in photography, this book presents both a new editing made by the photographer and new images taken in 2018 when he returns to Benares.

Content

This photo volume, 'End Time City' by Michael ACKERMAN, immerses us in a hallucinatory world. The American photographer takes us on a wild wander through the narrow streets of the holy city of Benares, the holiest city in Hinduism, which welcomes pilgrims who come here to die, to erase their sins and end the cycle of rebirths. Saturated with dust, populated by ghostly presences with intense gazes, Ackerman's photographs recreate a world bordering on a daydream, where the sensation of past-present simultaneity seems tangible. With shifts in focus, a feeling of "movement", overexposed lights and saturated contrasts, Ackerman's images question the limits of the photographic. "Far beyond what is seen and looked at, it is the intensity of an emotion that is rendered here," as Christian Caujolle points out." (© Edition Barral, 2021)

Additional information regarding the 1st print run

"The Indian city of Benares, the holy City of Light on the shore of the Ganges, is one of the oldest towns in the world, and one of the most frequently photographed. In this volume, photographer Michael ACKERMAN has created a personal portrait of the city which he visited for the first time in 1991. Independent of stereotypes of visual representations of Benares, Michael ACKERMAN's photographs testify to the strong personal relationship and interaction of this sensitive artist with the city: intense glances from people in the streets; dreamlike observations of a monkey balancing through electrical wires; moving and dignified images of mourners at the cremation grounds. Playing with a variety of formats, the black-and-white photographs by Michael ACKERMAN in the photo volume 'End Time City', offer to transcend the representation of Benares as a specific city and instead creates a moving and radically personal portrait of human life and death." (© Scalo, 1999)