Over the holiday period I spent my time working towards one of my local projects, a documentation of a small high-street Hindu Temple. They take advantage of the quiet around Christmas to celebrate their analogy of the Sabarimala Ayyappan pilgrimage which takes place each year in Kerala.
I have worked on documenting this community over a few months now, and will be writing about it in a great amount of detail as part of my in-the-works essay collection on how to produce a documentary project.
On Christmas Eve the community gathered at the temple to begin preparation, with some staying overnight and sleeping on the floor in order to be ready early the next day to work.
In larger Temples with greater budgets there are dedicated engineers and operators to construct anything required for a festival. For this celebration a Golden Chariot (painted wood) was used as with previous years - although the Kerala pilgrimage is not a chariot festival this is the particular local Temples spin on the event, and the community does it’s best to make it as special as possible.
On Christmas Day the congregation and presiding Swami gathered together to construct this chariot, with the Swami himself operating power tools, helping lift things into place and so on – not something you will likely see at a more prestigious establishment.
Boxing Day was the celebration itself, and I documented the procession along the high street and rituals which followed at the temple.
This is a slice of three days out of a much greater amount of time I have spent and will spend documenting this space, the kind of images I have made are only possible as a result of groundwork and trust with the people featuring in them.
This celebration here was the tenth year it has been held, and now that I have a good idea of the order of ceremony I will be able to approach the eleventh year with a strong understanding of what images I need to complete the project. Hopefully it will not require much more of me to have a finished body of work around this community and space.
Street Dances 
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