Originally published in 1999, End Time City was photographer Michael Ackerman’s documentation of his trip to Benares, the holiest city in Hinduism.
“I had a completely raw, heart-felt, visceral engagement with the city. Almost every night that I spent in Benares I would go to sleep very, very desperate to wake up and have another chance to absorb what was there and connect with it.
The city of Benares is an intense combination of fairy tale and nightmare. It is a very holy place to people and every day they come there by the hundreds, or thousands. It’s a never ending pilgrimage. At the same time it’s such a dark place where death is ever present. There’s just this poetic chaos to it, a beautiful urgency.”
It won the coveted Prix Nadar and now a revised and expanded edition of the iconic book is coming out this autumn including images taken in 2018 when Ackerman returned to Benares.
Atelier EXB, out October 14, €42.
