Theyyam is an old ritual art from North Kerala, India. The roots are older than the modern organized religions and this is NOT an art form. This is strictly a ritual where people participate irrespective of the religion.

Unlike Oracle's and many other rituals, Theyyam is not a representation of the Almighty, but its considered to be the Almighty itself.

The Ritual had fascinated me to the core and for 3 - 4 years I roamed the area attending numerous Theyyam festivals.

One of the photos from a festival I had uploaded on flickr, from there to Wikipedia & it has slowly spread to various news outlets who started plagiarizing as usual.

So, I went after everyone of them, collected payments from many and it went on. Then, everything changed, I started getting greeted my own photos at various rituals I went to. I came across the photo in travel festivals, tourism boards official brochures and even club / sports event hoardings.

I did the strange thing of upload / sharing the original image under creative commons share alike non-commercial license.

This social experiment resulted in more and more people using it making it part of almost every Theyyam, Tourism, Travel, cultural event posters.

So no one identifies me as the owner of the art work - but the plagiarists who does this for profit motive cannot use it anymore as it has become too common an image. Its everywhere.

I get queries from art galleries and genuine magazines once in a while to license and I give away freely. Some wants unique photos which are unpublished and its a small revenue source as well. Oh yea, I am a big proponent of Creative Commons licenses and this photo is the best example.

here is my latest find !

The big poster is an advertisement for a Theyyam Ritual to be conducted on 7th Feb, 2018.