This image, of a man kneeling at a grave in Uch Sharif, Pakistan, was my first published image in National Geographic Magazine, and my favorite in a series of portraits of Sufi pilgrims I made around the world. The Sufis are the followers of Mystic Islam. In a time of violent extremism in the world the Sufis represented the opposite: peace, and love, and poetry. In Pakistan, I was told that there are three ways of knowing a thing. The Sufis use the example of a flame. One can be told of the flame, one can see the flame with their own eyes, and finally one can reach out and be burned by it. In this way, Sufis seek to be burned by God. The followers of Mystic Islam want to feel their God in the surrender of the ecstatic trance, spinning in all night ceremonies, and in poetry and mantra-like chanting. I traveled back to Pakistan many years in a row just to hear their songs. I hear them whenever I see an image I've taken of their world. And I share the recordings of those songs with anyone who owns one of my images.
Photographed in 2006, 6300 x 4201px.