'Sacred Waters: India's Great Kumbha Mela Pilgrimage'

"Sacred Waters: India's Great Kumbha Mela Pilgrimage," featuring photographs by Chicago-based photojournalist Jean-Marc Giboux, will be at the H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art Feb. 9-March 27. An opening reception was held Feb. 18.

Top and above: © Photographs by Chicago-based photojournalist Jean-Marc Giboux

If You Go

WHAT: "Sacred Waters: India's Great Kumbha Mela Pilgrimage"

WHEN: Feb. 9-March 27; closed for spring break March 6-14.

WHERE: The H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art

GALLERY HOURS: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 6-8 p.m. Thursday, 1-4 p.m. Saturday

The exhibit features more than 40 dramatic photographs from the Kumbha Mela, a mass Hindu pilgrimage that takes place every three years at one of four sacred locations in India. Millions of Hindu worshippers participate, traveling to Prayag, Hardwar, Ujjain or Nasik to bathe in the sacred waters of the Ganges. It is the largest human gathering in the world, yet few outside of India are familiar with it.

"For me, this is one of the amazing things that happens in the world," said Giboux, who first photographed the Kumbha Mela in 1998 as a photojournalist on a one-week assignment. "When I saw it, I just fell in love with it." He ended up staying a month to document the religious processions and worshippers' activities. He returned to India for the Kumbha Mela in 2001, 2004 and 2007.

"It was just something that I wanted to capture," Giboux said, "and it took me almost 10 years to feel like I had it well enough to show it."

Carthage Professor Lends His Expertise

"Sacred Waters" debuted at the Chicago Field Museum on March 6, 2009, as a temporary exhibit on display through July 19. Carthage religion professor James Lochtefeld served as an academic consultant for the exhibit, working with Giboux and Field Museum staff on text to accompany the pictures.

Prof. Lochtefeld has devoted his career to studying the religions of India, has visited the country more than a dozen times, and wrote his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University on Hardwar, one of the four Kumbha Mela sites.

© Photograph by Jean-Marc Giboux

"I just think they're marvelous photographs," Prof. Lochtefeld said of Giboux's work. "They remind me personally of so many people that I have met or had interactions with. There's a very human quality to the photographs — that sense of humanity that transcends culture and boundaries and particular circumstances."

The H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art is the exhibit's second stop. Gallery director and Carthage art professor Diane Levesque saw the show in Chicago after hearing of Prof. Lochtefeld's involvement.

"When I saw the photos, I just knew I had to get this exhibit for Carthage College," Prof. Levesque said. "Each person (photographed) is the embodiment of a creative mythic form, like a living sculpture. That just really, really amazed me about the show."

The Carthage exhibit will include eight images that were not displayed in Chicago. "Visitors will be able to go from image to image, to really look at them and spend time with the work," Prof. Levesque said.

About Kumbha Mela: Centuries of Pilgrimage

"Sacred Waters" tells a modern story steeped in centuries of history. According to the charter myth for the Kumbha Mela ("festival of the pot"), gods and demons once battled over a pot that held the nectar of immortality, Prof. Lochtefeld explains. The gods ran away with the pot (kumbha), with the demons in hot pursuit. The gods fled for 12 divine days (equal to 12 human years), during which some of the nectar fell upon the Earth in four locations.

© Photograph by Jean-Marc Giboux

Those four places became sanctified as sites of pilgrimage: Prayag, Hardwar, Ujjain and Nasik. It is believed that every 12 years in each place — at a time determined by zodiacal configurations of the sun, moon and Jupiter — waters transform into the nectar of the gods, Lochtefeld explains. At that holiest moment, millions seek to bathe in the waters, and the riverbanks become sites of pageantry and prayer.

Hindus make the pilgrimage individually, with their families, and even as entire villages. Hindu ascetics, or sadhus, travel in processions to the holiest bathing places, bearing weapons and banners. These sadhus and other religious teachers gather to preach and perform sacred rites.

"I spend most of my time socializing, and the pictures happen in the last week," Giboux said, explaining how he's been able to witness, and capture, these moments. "There's a whole process in working there. First of all, I have to meet them, socialize with them, take their pictures to give to them. Then after that, I've spent enough time with them that they don't pay attention to me anymore."

"The sadhus do things that they don't do for everyone, and don't do very often," Giboux continued. "I wanted those pictures."

The results are often the most memorable photographs in "Sacred Waters."

"It's one of the great spectacles of humanity," Giboux said.

Prof. Levesque agreed: "The photographs document a cultural experience that most people in this area will never get a chance to see," she said. "It's unlike anything that we know."

© Photograph by Jean-Marc Giboux