In 2019, before the pandemic transformed all mass celebrations, Mario Testino photographed the Kumbh Mela, a festival where Hindu believers seek atonement — a purifying experience in which devotion and belonging are as tangible as any part of the material world. Testino magnifies the occasion by photographing those at the centre of the pilgrimage: the sadhus. Few forms of devotion carry the cultural significance and the extremeness of the sadhus, men committed to an ascetic life who become the embodiment of belief. Not only are material possessions forgotten in complete renunciation, but the body and its needs are left behind in the quest for ultimate enlightenment; faith possesses everything, replacing identity itself. We meet the sadhus as only Testino would present them: against a grey background, in full detail, portrayed as individuals.