All images © 2019-2023 Marc Delforge

…. to (some of) those I have admired, listed here in a deliberately random order.

Further down my tribute to a Sufi Saint through the photographs of some of his Turkish disciples at a festival in his honour.

In August 2002 after attending the wedding of a friend in Taurus (see https://marcdelforge.org/portfolio/weddings/ ) and visiting another old friend in Konya, and before joining my wife in Kos (Greece) on our way to Patmos and Lipsi ( to attend a religious festival: see https://marcdelforge.org/portfolio/greece/), I decided to revisit Cappadocia and to attend a nearby festival dedicated to the Sufi Saint Hadji Bektaş Veli whose tomb (türbesi) is located in Hacıbektaş.

Hadji Bektaş Veli (1209-1271) was a mystic but above all a paragon of tolerance and benevolence. He put people first (“ The greatest book to read is man himself.”), something I liked, as I used to travel the world mainly to meet them (and photograph them… slowly). And in Hacıbektaş I did indeed meet only kindness. I pay tribute here to some of these open-minded and spiritually inhabited people.