A TORRENT OF BODIES DRESSED IN BLACK, with indiscernible faces and flailing arms, surges towards a centre that is bruised red. Enveloped by a warm tungsten hue, the crowd pours through a narrow alley and into a large open space. Its seething movement creates a seamlessness that lends a sense of duration to an otherwise static frame. The focus of the image, and the crowd, is the undefined centre: a barely visible horse draped in a bright red cloth.
The image belongs to the Pakistani photographer Nad-e-Ali’s ongoing photo series “The Other Horses,” which documents Lahore’s annual Shabih-e-Zuljinah processions. Held during the month of Muharram, the Shia mourning processions commemorate the death of Hussain ibn Ali, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad, in the seventh-century Battle of
