Holi Celebration in Phoenix!

When I was a student at Arizona State University I attended my first Holi celebration but it is nothing compared to what I experience at South Mountain Park at an event hosted by the Indian Association of Phoenix. It was madness, but a slow madness and I’m lucky I only got caught by two people. If you want to know more about the festival I would recommend clicking the link above as wikipedia will do a better job than I will.

What I loved about the celebration was the pure joy of it, when I teach my photojournalism students about capturing moments we talk about how difficult that can be. People are so aware in everyday life it’s hard to capture honest moments of emotion. A festival like this is beautiful because it reminds people how much fun can be had in just a few hours of their Sunday afternoon. I saw grown men chasing each other with water guns and dousing each other with buckets of colored water. It is rare to see adults, myself included, reduced to the pure joy of childhood and it makes those ‘moments’ so much easier to capture. My only lament was that I couldn’t properly participate (I had a formal event I was shooting later in the day and the dyes do stick to your skin . . . ).