My name is Dick Verton. I live in the Netherlands and I am a retired Freelance Press photographer.

Photography has always been one of the big passions in my life; I won my first prize at the age of 14 in a contest of a local newspaper. Later in my life, i have published in many Magazines, and i have around 10 exhibitions in divers Musea, Galleries etc.

Many years later my wife and I travelled a lot and Asia was one of our favourite continents. We discovered the beauty of India and in particular Varanasi.

(According to us…) there is no city in the world as charming, fascinating and photogenic as Varanasi…

As a photographer, I like to capture impressions of the daily life of people (and animals) with my camera. I prefer working with a theme; my favourite way of working is to capture people while they are eating, sleeping, reading, working, etc. I also made a series of pictures with the theme ‘shoes off’.

Roaming through the narrow streets of Varanasi and strolling along the ghats at the shores of the holy Ganges river, all my senses, especially my eyes, and my camera is working overtime… Never a dull moment! When you walk and sit on the Ghats you can feel the spirituality of this place.

This is the perfect place to capture every moment of life. By taking many pictures I try to tell a story. You could say I ‘steal’ a moment, a split second, from the lives of the people I meet. Then I put the images together to tell their story.

So I noticed that many people, mainly sadhus, are sleeping on the ghats. They always take off their shoes, sandals or flip flops and put them aside neatly arranged next to each other… That resulted in the series of pictures with the theme ‘shoes off’ as I mentioned before.