Bali Sacred & Secret: Photojournal by Gill Marais

Rachel Greaves, Contributor, Kerobokan, Bali

Launched on Tuesday, Bali Sacred & Secret is a remarkable revelation of a rarely witnessed, mystical world of ritual and magic. In 248 pages of stunning and extraordinary photographs complemented by thought-provoking text, Gill Marais invites and challenges the observer to delve beneath the veneer of commercial tourism into the depths of Bali’s golden, living culture.

Published by Saritaksu Editions, the book is the result of 17 years of privileged access to daily life and sacred ceremonies.

Marais is an adventurer who is unafraid to journey into the unknown and to draw from sacred, secret sources. Her remarkable images are testimony not only to her creative skills behind the lens but also to her boundless energy, her modesty, her sensitivity and her ability to mingle with Hindu priests.

South-African born Marais is a freelance photojournalist who specializes in cultural travel and medical reportage. She has traveled extensively in India, Pakistan, China, Tibet, Europe and Africa, and has published a book on Tibetan medicine entitled Right Over the Mountain: Travels with a Tibetan Medicine Man. She first came to Bali in 1988.

She followed her calling late in life and still shoots with film, remaining loyal to her ancient and cherished Leica M7 camera. Chronicling the sequences of the royal cremation in Gianyar in 1993 set her on her path. On this life-changing visit, she established strong ties with the island and has been returning ever since, and now divides her time equally between Bali and the south of France.

Bali Sacred & Secret reveals the island to be “a place of great complexity and polarity, reflecting much of what contemporary life has lost and what could be preserved”, a place where “time is untamed and imprecise, playing havoc with Western priorities of constancy, schedules and punctuality”.

Marais’ photographs are an exploration of a rich culture woven with magic, art and religious ritual. Few places on earth celebrate life with such vitality; an ever-prevailing sense of harmony is shaped by history and myth, and combined with warm hospitality, active spiritual practice and natural splendor.

Many of the pictures are of everyday Balinese scenes, treasured by every visitor. Villagers carrying produce to the market, for example, the mischievous, playful antics of children, the beauty of youth, and the dignity and poise of the very old. Other images, such as the fire and trance dance, record aspects of a powerful, secret Bali seldom seen by outsiders.

Some of the photographs are historical — the cremation of a princess or the evolution of traditional costume over the years. A number of the images capture the physically charged atmosphere of trance processions: they portray priests dancing on fire to protect their communities from sickness, and the sometimes troubling spectacles of the possessed.

Marais would repeatedly revisit annual ceremonies to complete a series of shots. Once, after five years of documenting the same event, Marais was exceptionally honored to be invited into the inner sanctum of a temple where mediums were opening the secret portals in the minds of the entranced in order to communicate with other entities.

Her cover shot depicts the Shanghyang Dedari, or “trance of the celestial maidens”, wherein prepubescent girls stand upon men’s shoulders and dance. The entranced girls bend backwards in the ngelayak movement of a tree laden with blossoms swaying in the wind, without holding or being held by the men.

Delighting in the challenge of low light conditions, Marais’ long exposures encapsulate mystery, movement, speed and strange shapes that leave the viewer wondering if they might be spirits.

She endured rain, mud, fleas and red ants, heat, cramp and mechanical mishaps to ensure her presence at the right time in the right place.

Having been brought up with hunters in Africa, Marais likens photography to the hunt and the required patience of the hunter in capturing his prey.

She explains, “No information in Bali is uniform, rituals and beliefs differ from village to village.” Drinking constant cups of kopi from temple stalls, she would often wait for hours for a ceremony to commence. The priests, with no appointed time at which to begin, were also waiting — “for arcane communications from the gods or the arrival of some essential offering.”

One night, the author-photographer fell asleep in a temple to be woken at 3 a.m. by “the sound of drums and flutes accompanying palanquins of deified ancestors being escorted to the mother temple of Besakih” — a 10-hour march away!

Marais says, “Despite the culture being sapped by materialism, the underlying power of the Balinese and their beliefs still remains for those who look for it. I am proud to be able to give back to Bali what Bali has given to me for the last seventeen years.

“I would like to express my gratitude to Sarita Newson — the publisher — she envisioned the book that I saw. Without her vision, together with the incredible talent of her son, Kadek Krishna Adidharma, Bali Sacred & Secret could not have been possible.”