Where the river turns backward, Varanasi stitched together.

The Ganges river at Varanasi means many things to many people. For travelers and pilgrims, it is a destination. For the boatmen and merchants who live there, it is the source of their livelihood. It is a famous place for bathing and cremation, universal rituals for beginning and final departure. For photographers, it is an experience of visual overload. Filled with epic and mundane human drama, architectural, and natural beauty. Here, the river takes an auspicious turn from its Southeast flow back Northward. It is as if the Ganga were trying a return to the source. The change in flow is one of the reasons the place is so revered. As a metaphor, this can take many forms. The longing to return. The journey in refection. The illusion of reality halted even as time and movement meander forward. Over the years I have been to Varanasi four times. I've always been a passerby, wandering, and shooting. There is too much of the place for one frame to contain. And I chose to shoot in stitched panoramas to create images that convey this feeling. I discovered geography and landmarks remain rigid, water, and people do not stay still. The AI of camera stitch has a hard time dealing with this concept. Depending on how information is input the visuals resolve in interesting ways. Movement in the AI of stitched image computation is akin to the recollection of memory. Taking multiple images and reimagining them onto an updated canvas. It could be like telling the story of a past journey. Sometimes in the telling, there are ghostly reflections or perspectives ajar. Today in digital photography the bounds are becoming stretched and stitched and filtered. What is real, in recollection is taking new meaning in the age of AI-assisted photography.