These photographs depict the ten-day Brahmotsava festival (known today as the Pungani festival), the primary festival of the Kapalishvara Temple of Mylapore, a Shaiva Temple located in the historic quarter of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India. In these photographs, we see the processions of deities embodied in bronze statues. The deities appear as living beings, elaborately dressed in silks, jewels, crowns, and flower garlands, which largely obscure their metal surfaces. Twice a day, in the morning and evening, images of the gods emerge from the temple compound and are paraded through the surrounding streets. In many of the photos the fruit, flowers, and other offerings made to the deities are visible. Today the presiding deity of the festival is Shiva as Somaskanda (with his wife Uma and son Skanda). Shiva is locally known, however, as Kapalishvara (Lord of the Skull-Bowl), the form he assumes at the dissolution of the cosmos. According to status, the presiding deities are typically carried on the animal mounts, or vahanas, with which they are associated—for example, Shiva on his bull—or on chariot-temple cars. Lesser deities and poet-saints are transported on palanquins, or sibika, portable shrines secured to long bamboo poles that are carried on the shoulders of temple servants. The photographs also show other appointees walking alongside the procession holding parasols to honor and shade the deities. Dick Waghorne has been photographing festival processions in India since 1978. He has accompanied his wife Joanne Punzo Waghorne, Professor of Religion at Syracuse University, on numerous research trips, and their joint work has been published in several journals and books. Their research excursions have been supported by organizations including Fulbright-Hays, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the College of Arts and Sciences, Syracuse University.

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