Reflecting the passage of time and global interconnectedness, Athens photographer Jason Thrasher’s exhibition “Kashi Washi,” on view at ACE/FRANCISCO Gallery, combines photographs taken in Benares, India in 1998 with those shot in 2023. Benares, also known as Varanasi or Kashi, is an ancient and holy city located in northern India on the bank of the Ganges river. In addition to its beautiful temples, Benares is renowned for its ghats, or embankments of stone slabs that lead down into the river. The majority of these ghats are used for ritual bathing by pilgrims, while two are used exclusively as cremation sites. Offering an alternative to travel photography that primarily focuses on these riverfront scenes, “Kashi Washi” ventures deeper into the sacred city to connect with the individuals who call Benares home.
Prior to his first visit to India, Thrasher was working as an employee of The Globe, where he would frequently meet graduate students and other international travelers who all naturally gravitated towards the pub for its name, occasionally even encouraging him to come visit them one day. After waking up one morning from a dream in which he traveled around the world, Thrasher felt inspired to turn the dream into a reality. However, as he began planning his trip, which was initially envisioned to cross several countries, his curiosity and focus shifted entirely to India.
Thrasher was able to fund his travels by pre-selling roughly 50 photographs over the course of six months to friends, relatives and collectors who would not see the prints until the following year—a precursor to today’s popular crowdsourcing models like Kickstarter. With a new Leica camera in hand, Thrasher landed in Mumbai and spent the next three and a half months traveling to various cities across India, shooting anything that caught his eye.
A major turning point occurred in New Delhi, when Thrasher visited with Raghu Rai, one of India’s most prominent photographers and photojournalists, who has spent over five decades documenting the culture and people of India. Leafing through various publications, the two discussed a prevalent, underlying sense of disconnect between Western photographers and their Indian subjects. Rai then asked Thrasher about his motivations and purpose, to which he responded, “I’m trying to see who I would be if I was born and raised on the other side of the planet.” This conversation brought into focus his distinct perspective and the intentions behind his artistic endeavors, greatly impacting how he approached the remainder of his time in India.
With its beautiful architecture and deep spiritual and cultural significance, Benares is a widely popular destination for tourists who can often be found by the boatloads photographing bathers along the banks of the river. When Thrasher first arrived in the city, he wanted to avoid being invasive and felt uncomfortable taking any photographs for several days. Instead, he spent his time wandering the city’s old historic alleyways and frequenting a chai shop—located near a convenience store and barber shop—where he gradually began meeting and photographing locals.
This little corner of the world, tucked away from the bustle of the riverfront, recalled memories of his own father’s clothing shop in Alabama, which was located next door to a barber shop and a few doors down from an ice cream shop. Finding parallels between his life and the lives of these men, Thrasher finally felt like he had an impression of who he may have become had he been born on the other side of the world. For the next two weeks, they became the focus of 30 rolls of film.
In November 2023, 25 years after his initial trip, Thrasher returned to Benares with a yearning to revisit the specific street corner he had so deeply connected with years before. He came prepared with 50 physical prints, as well as many more photographs organized digitally on his phone. His first night in Benares, he went down to the river towards the burning ghats and was quickly approached by a local who earnestly offered to lead him around the site. Thrasher explained why he was there and showed him a few photographs. As luck would have it, the man quickly identified several of the people in the portraits and had Thrasher on his way to finding them by the next morning.
“Kashi Washi” offers windows into two specific points of time in the history of Benares and bridges them through the connection created between Thrasher and his photographic subjects. Featuring several recreations of images from 1998, the exhibition pairs black-and-white originals alongside recent color counterparts that draw attention to aging, familiarity and change. A personal reunion of sorts, as well as an update on the lives of the people who have been working and living in Benares all of these years, “Kashi Washi” demonstrates how a large city can begin to feel like a small town as relationships between community members are discovered.
ACE/FRANCISCO Gallery, which is co-owned by Jason and Beth Hall Thrasher, will be open in conjunction with the citywide gallery-hopping initiative Third Thursday on Feb. 15 from 6–9 p.m., as well as Saturdays through February from 11 a.m.–4 p.m. The gallery will host a special free performance by Elephant 6 affiliated psych-folk pop act The Rishis on Saturday, Feb. 17 at 7 p.m. Thrasher will offer an artist talk a couple doors down at ATHICA on the following Saturday, Feb. 24 at 7 p.m., while ACE/FRANCISCO stays open for viewing from 6–9 p.m. “Kashi Washi” will remain on display through May by appointment, and future gallery hours can be found at acefranciscogallery.com.
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