James Hervey: When The Heart Feels Light
Story/Interview by Max Chavanne • Photos by James Hervey

"On action alone be thy interest, never on its fruits. Abiding in discipline perform actions, abandoning attachment, being indifferent to success or failure. (Bhagavad Gita, 1: 25)"

Born in Singapore and educated in a Benedictine Boarding School in England, 38 year-old Paris-based, India-loving photographer James Hervey became a dear friend the very moment we met. He has been a source of constant inspiration ever since.

It all began some years ago when I was having a chat with one yet-unfamiliar guest, Bobby, back at Stolly’s, a tiny Irish bar located right in the heart of century-old Le Marais district in Paris. Within a matter of minutes the man suggested that I "should meet James" and introduced me on the spot to this special half-Scott, half-French young man.

Ever since, we’ve been enjoying blessings of all sorts offered by our City of Lights – whether it be attending a concert at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées hosting Ravi Shankar and his daughter Anoushka, or going through old photos at my home while enjoying a cup of Yogi Tea, or even just walking along the banks of the Seine River on our way to meet the next "Magic Brother" or "Mystic Sister" while sharing our mutual interest in various topics. And those topics are varied, indeed, ranging from Tibetan culture to James Brown’s phat funky beats or Tolkien’s tales of Elves and Hobbits to Glenn Gould’s vs. Rosalyn Tureck’s stellar renderings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

If, in Patanjali’s words, meditation and yoga mean "the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind" then it could be said that Hervey’s photography is just that: a meditation in it’s own right. Creating a state where, rising above duality, "the observer becomes one with the observed." Not unlike a Tibetan mantra or some solo piano work such as Bach’s The Well Tempered Clavier, the soothing, equalizing quality of Hervey’s work on the viewer just cuts through the layers of the mind, hitting a nerve way beyond the sheer beauty of the light and shapes he captures in the Hasselblads he takes with him on repeated trips back to ‘Mother India’.

Is it any wonder that, when not shooting or processing and printing in the lab, the man happens to deliver subtle improvisations on the piano?

Yet Hervey likes to merely see his frames as "pointers" likely to bring echoes of something that deep within we all share and know – something undying and unborn which some ancient cultures have been refering to as "The Silent Knowledge". And so the inner journey begins.

Entitled Eternity in 144 Years and One Day, his 2003 project called Moksha (Sanskrit for ‘The Liberation’) is a threefold story. Part 1 consists of Hervey’s own personal take on the Maha (Sanskrit for ‘great’) Kumbha Mela, a huge spiritual gathering that takes place maybe once in a lifetime, bringing together millions of devotees and holy men to Allahabad, India. Part 2 focuses on the dark backstreets of ‘Kashi’ (‘The City of Light’, ancient Indian name for Benares). Part 3 explores Benares' ghats, its stairways leading down into the holy waters of the Ganges.

Read Max Chavanne's interview with James Hervey

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