(Hardcover with slipcase | 26 x 27 cm | 380 pages | 441 color plates | (c) Niyogi Books, 2018)

The culmination of five years’ travel with Indian pilgrims, “Nostalgia for Eternity” takes the reader into the depths of millennia-old spiritual and mystic traditions. It is a stunning visual poem about the timeless human search for transcendence and ultimate truth.

Translated literally from the Greek, ‘nostalgia’ means homesickness; spiritually, it is the universal longing for existential peace and completeness — for a final resolution of all life’s conflicts and contradictions. ‘The truth is one, ’ taught India’s ancient gurus,‘ the sages call it by many names.’ With breadth and insight unmatched by any other photo book, “Nostalgia for Eternity” illustrates the worlds of pilgrims seeking that transcendent truth and illuminates the different paths that they travel. Through evocative, complex images we enter the secretive realm of Tantric worshippers of the Mother Goddess, and we walk with Sufi pilgrims across the deserts of Rajasthan. Meditative, richly layered photographs reveal the inner world of Bengali Bauls — mystics who worship the human being, and of Sidis —descendants of African saints whose religion merges African ancestor worship with Sufism. Richly annotated text reveals to the reader the deeper symbolic and mythological significance of the Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic and syncretic practices explored in the book.

“Nostalgia for Eternity” is an extended visual meditation on the highest human aspirations: to know the nature of one’s true self and to understand one’s place in the cosmos.

Available in bookstores and on Amazon

 

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Praise for “Nostalgia for Eternity”

“Few photographers have succeeded so well as Leonid Plotkin in capturing the uncapturable color and texture, chaos and order, terror and beauty of the religious life of India, exploding before us here like the kaleidoscopic aftershock of some distant big bang in the depths of the world’s soul. A feast for the eyes, outer and inner as well.”

—Prof. Matthew T. Kapstein, Professor of Buddhist Studies, Philosophy of Religions and History of Religions, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, and The University of Chicago.

“This is a visually stunning attempt to capture some of the diversity of contemporary Indian religious life in photography. Leonid Plotkin has succeeded admirably in conveying the beauty, the brilliance, and the mystery of the sadhus and the monks, the fakirs and the holy men and women of India in one aesthetic firework. A brilliant volume for the intrepid armchair explorer of the Indian religious cosmos.”

—Prof. Jan Westerhoff, Professor of Buddhist Philosophy, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford.

“Poet, philosopher, but above all see-er, Leonid Plotkin through the eye of his camera takes us on our own eye-opening journey through many of India’s religions. Impelled by a deep belief in the transcendental unity of all religious experience, Plotkin explores in his photographs an astonishing range of rituals—pilgrimages to Hindu temples, trance dances of Sufi mystics, possession ceremonies of descendants of African slaves, marriage rituals of the Hijras, the Buddhist Cham dance of the Himalayas and more. These are images of startling energy and immediacy that bring us directly into each of the many worlds of beauty and profundity that the author has discovered. Passages of personal reflection and interpretation accompany the photographs, inviting us to recognize our common humanity in this incredible diversity of religious practice.”

—Prof. Phyllis Granoff, Professor of Indian Religions, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University.

“Nostalgia for Eternity” is a unique treasure-trove for travelers, scholars and students of Indian religions, visually exciting and ethnographically insightful as well as poetic and reflective. Weaving together images and texts on lived religious practice, the photographer and author takes the reader on an inspiring journey to discover spiritual traditions outside the realm of mainstream religion. Accompanying pilgrims to a multitude of sacred places and landscapes, from the Himalayas in the north to Kerala in the south, from the Punjab in the west to Bengal in the east, Leonid Plotkin explores archaic magic rites, dance and prayer, ecstasy and trance, meeting Muslim fakirs, Hindu ascetics, Buddhist monks, Tantra practitioners, Sikh soldier saints, religious minstrels and incarnate gods to name just a few. In these traditions of religious pluralism faith is often shared and borders between denominations are therefore not emphasized. What a stunning and enlightening work offering both food for thought and nourishment for the soul!”

—Prof. Dr. Jürgen Wasim Frembgen, Anthropologist, Scholar of Islamic Studies and Writer, Institute of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich.

“Leonid Plotkin takes us on a yatra or spiritual journey in this remarkable work. But it is not simply a linear yatra froma to b.It is rather a pilgrimage through a diversity of faiths that have been nurtured in the Indian subcontinent, largely from ancient times—faiths that in their own way are a storehouse of great human wisdom. The text is illuminated by his magnificent photographs which carry us way beyond its words through their insight, clarity, and explorative depth. In the end—though the journey itself never ends—we arrive at an encompassing vision that is unique and truly instructive. The images flow into and reinforce each other making our yatra wondrous but real—an experience that remains seared in the memory.”

—Prof. Julius Lipner, Professor Emeritus in Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion, University of Cambridge, Fellow of the British Academy.

“Leonid Plotkin is a rare soul, a pilgrim with his eyes wide open, able to see out, and within, at the same time—the journey’s end even as it begins. By his stunning photographs he captures the amazing richness of Indian ways of being religious, and by his own luminous words gives personal expression to every place and person he has met. Nostalgia for Eternity will draw its readers to India, back to India; and yet this is a guidebook, also for those who cannot go there now, on how to seek deep within ourselves the wisdom and love manifest in the world around us.”

—Prof. Francis X. Clooney, SJ, Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology, Harvard University.

“The diverse religious traditions of South Asia—often clustered into specific groups by summary labels such as ‘Hinduism,’ ‘Buddhism,’ ‘Islam,’ and others—are dense interweaves of, on the one hand, sophisticated systems of belief, and, on the other hand, richly sensuous imageries which are embodied in music, dance, song, literature, and architecture. Through vignettes of the vivid tapestries of religious existences across the multiple worlds of Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Muslims, and some dynamic worlds which straddle these neat divides, Leonid Plotkin takes us on several crisscrossing pilgrimages through time in a quest for that spiritual presence which is yet beyond time. We see the pulsating presence of the divine mother charging through a mortal human frame, a solitary monk journeying towards the ineffable silence, an ascetic standing at the paradoxical intersections between worldly power and world renunciation, a musician singing of the eternal reality which is yet present in the innermost recesses of the human heart, and a faithful congregation lovingly remembering their departed saint. Religion is never simply a cerebral affair, and Plotkin offers us a sumptuous feast so that we can imbibe multiple sounds, tastes, and smells of the visceral expressions of spirituality in South Asia.”

—Prof. Ankur Barua, Lecturer in Hindu Studies, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge.

“This is a fascinating, visually opulent documentation of manifold individual journeys, in search of the same goal, on the many paths of the philosophia perennis, transcending rigid boundaries of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. It leads us to view religiosity as a living, pulsating and transmutable organism, not as something characterised by ossified strictures.”

—Prof. Dr. Rahul Peter Das, Professor of South Asian Studies and Dean of Studies of the Faculty of Philosophy, Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg.

“This book contains an extraordinary collection of photographs, many of them involving rituals that are difficult to find and record. It includes images of practitioners of Yoga, Vedanta, Tantra, Bhakti, Sikhism, Sufism, and other Indian traditions, with excellent portraits of sadhus and fakirs. The photographer clearly went to many places that are difficult to visit, and he was able to gain the confidence of his subjects. The book includes images from pilgrimages, tantric rituals, possession rituals, sacred dances, initiations, fairs, and Buddhist contemplative sessions. It teaches about Indian religion through images, and the captions with each picture explain the settings and give the writer’s understanding of events. It is a beautiful book, which can introduce Indian religions to those who have never visited the country, and bring back memories to those who have been there.”

—Prof. June McDaniel, Professor of the History of Religions, Department of Religious Studies, College of Charleston.

“An amazing collection of photographs revealing many aspects of Indian spirituality.”

—Prof. Johannes Bronkhorst, Professor Emeritus of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, University of Lausanne, Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

“Evocatively entitled ‘Nostalgia for Eternity,’ this book provides a fascinating photographic account of the various traditions that characterize the Indian search for freedom within samsara. By relating the rich varieties of the traditions to the Perennial Philosophy, the book shows curious affinities as well as major distinctions between these so varied and still living traditions of spiritual practice. ‘Nostalgia for Eternity’ gives us a sense, as few academic books do, of what it is really like to experience and participate in Indian religious practice. The photographs of some of the views, and the people within this landscape, are breathtaking, communicating to the reader how much these traditions—and the people who practice within them—operate within and relate to their extraordinary natural environment. It is a book about India, but suggests too why these regions have been the home to so many ways of personal practice and meditative paths.”

—Prof. Sarah Shaw, Faculty Member of the Oriental Institute and Lecturer, University of Oxford, Honorary Fellow of the Oxford Center for Buddhist Studies.