Nomachi Kazuyoshi: A Photographic Pilgrimage in Search of the “Shapes of Prayer”

Nomachi Kazuyoshi

After a simple lunch, a man kneels in the burning sands of the desert to pray in the direction of Mecca. After praying, he turns and returns to join the camel caravan waiting in the background. Photographed in 1975 in Fezzan, in the southwestern interior of Libya. (From Sahara)

A Dinka boy blows air into a cow’s vagina to stimulate the cow and encourage lactation. Sudd, in the interior of South Sudan, 1981. (From The Nile)

Ethiopian Orthodox Christians gather on the walls surrounding a church hewn into the rock to hear a priest’s sermon as part of ceremonies to mark Timkat, or the baptism of Christ. Ethiopia has its own unique form of Christianity that has inherited many of the traditions of ancient Judaism. Photographed at Lalibela, Ethiopia, 1981. (From The Nile)

A line of nomads waits for the arrival of a lama to conduct religious ceremony on the plateau. Taken in 1988 in an area of the Szechuan highlands that was once a stronghold of the Red Army. Crossing these plains was one of the biggest hardships on the Red Army’s Long March. (From Dreams and Reality of the Long March)

Prostrate pilgrims crawl toward Lhasa, reciting texts from Buddhist sutras. Photographed in 1989. (From Tibet)

Crowds celebrate Laylat al-Qadr, held through the night from the twenty-seventh day of Ramadan at the Great Mosque in Mecca. Pilgrims perform the Tawaf, circumambulating the Kaaba seven times in an anticlockwise direction. Taken in 1995. (From Mecca the Blessed, Medina the Radiant)

Children of foreign workers study the Koran at a madrasa in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Taken in 1985. (From Mecca the Blessed, Medina the Radiant)

Men mourn the death of Imam Husayn, who was killed in the Battle of Karbala, Iraq. Mourners hold up a small child representing Husayn’s youngest son. Mashhad, Iran, 2001. (From Persia)

Pilgrims bathe in the holy waters of the Ganges during the Kumbh Mela festival in Allahabad in northern India, confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers. 2007. (From Ganges)

Held in the Andes, the modern Quyllurit’i festival derives from legends of a young boy who appeared in a holy place of the Incas as a manifestation of Christ. Here, men return down the mountain with their dismantled crosses after the prayers are over. Photographed in 2004 on a glacier 5,000 meters above sea level in the Andes mountains of Peru. (From A Photographer’s Pilgrimage)