Ghosts hover everywhere on Bali. At least that is what the inhabitants of this Indonesian island believe, who see their lives as connected with an 'other world'. Balinese spiritual culture, a mixture of Hinduism, animism and Islam, was one of the last in the world to have developed in all isolation. Because of that, centuries-old ceremonies and rituals survive down to this day. John Stanmeyer did a photographic report using a Holga, a dirt-cheap camera that is notorious for its imperfect images. His photographs therefore appear to have been made decades ago, stressing the historicity of the spiritual culture on Bali.

John Stanmeyer (b. 1964, United States), a co-founder of the photo agency VII, works on a contract basis for Time Magazine. For the last decades he has been stationed in Asia. In 2006 he participated in the Noorderlicht exhibition Another Asia.