Benares seen from within

the long version

"A rare combination of creative photography and cultural history put together by one man, this book both visually and textually is the most massive presentation of this extraordinary city ever attempted. It is the fruit of a lifelong interest in Benares from 1953 until the present day.". "Lannoy's Benares is no tourist's idyll, nor yet is it an exercise in peddling a 'Third World' mythology of exotica garnished with grunge. Unflinching in his observations, yet enormously sensitive to his subject, Lannoy records the everyday life of Hinduism's most sacred city. And it is not through the formal acts of ritual, but through the most ordinary gestures of river-side and marketplace that the charged, heightened drama of life in Benares unfolds."--BOOK JACKET.