THE SEARCHERS (India, 2006)

It is a familiar picture: Westerners going off to India to imbibe its spiritual tradition. Sasha Bezzubov and Jessica Sucher asked themselves what the deeper significance is of this apparently good-natured tourism. They photographed the spiritual adventurers in the environment they came to find. Most of the places have been specifically created for them, and are surrounded by various service industries – a copy of the power relationship between East and West. The clothing and paraphernalia of the Westerners reminds one of their predecessors, who proclaimed India a spiritual oasis in the 1960s. The overexposure of the photographs represents their intermediate status, embodied in the journey and the spiritual search.