Praying in the Rain
Introduction
By Diana Darling
In Bali, the old holy is in the care of ordinary people: housewives, farmers, schoolchildren. This is one of the reasons why the photographs in this collection are so remarkable. They are all, in some way, about how the Balinese people encounter the divine; but while most images of Balinese ritual — from traditional painting to tourist snapshots — are at once crowded and diffuse, these photographs are about individuals, usually in a quiet moment of ritual practice or in the sort of repose, which is almost a pastime, that the Balinese call bengong, meaning to stare into space.
To enter the world beneath the beautiful surface of the photographs, it is useful to know a bit about Bali’s religion. These days, well into the twenty-first century, most Balinese (apart from the few who are Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist) would tell you that they are Hindu. But this is a recent term for what is a strange and very old religion with roots in animism and ancestor worship, as well as classical Javanese court culture and deep currents of Buddhist and Shaivite Tantra; and it is still evolving. In any case, it is a religion unlike anything found anywhere else. Although Bali is a small island (less than half the size of Connecticut or about a quarter of the size of Wales), it has its own language and script, and its own idiosyncratic music, architecture, poetry, painting, dance and theatrical art forms. And all of this culture is employed in the worship of their gods.
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