"Beyond" Varanasi Documentary: Cale Glendening

For 12/12/12 (the so-called end of days or whatever it's called), I've featured the trailer (for those with limited time or a short attention span) as well as the full length (43 minutes  of “BEYOND”. A documentary by filmmaker Cale Glendening which features photographer Joey L. and his assistant Ryan McCarney as they complete their latest photo series “Holy Men” in the ancient city of Varanasi.

Beautiful film work, and interesting insight as to how Joey L. works in the field, amongst ancient cultures and with atypical characters as the Aghori sadhus...one of whom speaks almost fluent English. It's also interesting to see how Joey L., a young Canadian commercial photographer, goes about his craft. He's seen working with a medium format digital Phase One camera and portable softboxes.

Very much more commercial (or fashion photographic) work than travel photography, and one that consumes a lot of planning, time and effort. It's gratifying that Joey and his teammates realize the value of making a connection, and friendships, before starting to shoot their camera flashes in the faces of their subjects.

But I'm not sure what to make of the Aghori sadhus who were photographed and filmed here in this documentary.

The Aghori, mostly ascetic sadhus, are a Shaivite Hindu sect, known for violating typical Indian and other social mores, and for unorthodox, taboo rituals such as cannibalism of corpses and using skulls as drinking vessels. My understanding is that they shun the company of others, and follow secret rituals...with no interest in notoriety or publicity of any sort.

So I'm a little puzzled by the two Aghoris appearing in this documentary, throwing some flammable stuff in a small bonfire and holding a skull.

In any event, it makes for good viewing.

Reuters Full Focus' Best of 2012

Photo © Reuters/Rupak de Chowdhuri-All Rights Reserved

Yes, like you I did a double take when I saw this photograph on Reuters Full Focus blog as one of the photographs that made it in its Best of 2012. And yes, once again it's that time of year when every news outlet in the world decides to feature its "best" images made during the past 12 months.

Its caption tells us that it's of a Hindu devotee attending the "Chadak" ritual at Krishanadevpur village, which is north of Kolkata earlier this year, when hundreds of devotees attend the ritual to worship the Hindu deity Lord Shiva, on the last day of the Bengali calendar year. The Chadak ritual includes a number of self-mortification acts performed by devotees.

The caption also tells us the photographer was unable to check the veracity of the action of this man.

I find it very hard to believe that this is for real. The red turban is suspiciously too low on the man's neck, and there are various tricks that magicians mimic such a horrifying thing.

I've attended various rituals (such the one of the Kali workshippers in Kodungallur where they beat their forefronts with swords until blood gushes out), and I know that I'd certainly circle this devotee to photograph him back and front, and ascertain the trickery (or not). I also find it surprising that there are no other photograph of this fellow other than this one. There are photographs of other people with hooks in their backs, but none of this one.

The photographer, Rupak de Chowdhuri, a photographer with Reuters, Corbis, etc. tells us that he started taking his pictures from different angles, and tried talking to this man to get more information but he didn’t utter a word.

In any case, this is what is called a "monumental pain in the neck".

Whatever it is, the rest of the photographs are also worth a look. Some are really very good...others not so much.

Antonio Gibotta: Holi

Photo © Antonio Gibotta-All Rights Reserved

In contrast with the currently underway Pushkar fair whose authenticity is marred by its popularity amongst foreign tourists; a topic I posted about a few days ago, Holi festival is one event I encourage most photographers to attend despite the potential damage to one's cameras from the dyed water and powder that is thrown during it. It's one of the events still outstanding on my list of Indian religious festivals, and it's one I blogged about repeatedly.

Today I add another Holi photo gallery by Italian photographer Antonio Gibotta.

Like his father, Antonio became a photographer and specializes in human and social issues. His international photo galleries include work from India, China, and Africa. Browse through his website, and don't miss his lovely black & white work from Kashmir. He won a number of recognitions and awards from international publications and contests.

New! Unique! The Sufi Saints Of Rajasthan & Kashmir

I earned the reputation of planning, organizing and leading unusual "off the beaten path" photographic experiences, so I am particularly pleased to announce my forthcoming The Sufi Saints of Rajasthan & Kashmir Photo Expedition-Workshop in early May 2013, which promises to be another unique photographic expedition, rivaling in intensity those that preceded it.

This is a unique photo expedition delving into the esoteric traditions of Sufism in Srinagar (Kashmir) as well as to attend the Urs Ajmer Sharif, an annual commemoration of Sufi saints in Ajmer (Rajasthan). It is the largest commemoration of Sufi saints in India, attended by many thousands of South Asian Muslims. The Ajmer event attracts the pious and the not-so-pious...the religious and the charlatans, the fakirs and the storytellers.

In common with my photo expeditions-workshops, the aim of this one is to assist participants produce multimedia bodies of work by merging their still photography and audio recordings to create compelling narratives.

For a taste of my work with Indian Sufism, interested readers can view The Possessed of Mira Datar, an article and photos that offer insight into sufism in the subcontinent, the multimedia photo essay on The Possessed of Hazrat Mira Datar, and a gallery of still photographs on In Search of the Sufis of Gujarat.

Details are on The Sufi Saints of Rajasthan & Kashmir Photo Expedition-Workshop website.

The Frame's Pushkar Fair

Photo © AP / Rajesh Kumar Singh-All Rights Reserved

The Sacramento Bee's photo blog The Frame is featuring some 27 images of the Pushkar Fair, which started Wednesday, November 21 2012.

According to The Times of India, it kicked off "amid colorful celebrations and enthusiastic participation of foreign tourists"  and its first day highlight was a soccer match between local and tourists. This annual five-day camel and livestock fair is supposedly one of the world's largest camel fairs and has become an important tourist attraction.

You can see where I'm going with this. The Pushkar Fair, once a visually compelling event for photographers, has become a tourist attraction with all the negatives that such a description entails.

I've written up a post about the demise of the fair from a photographer's perspective in February 2007 (almost 6 years ago) saying this:

"It's absolute nonsense for serious photographers to time their stay in the town of Pushkar at the peak of the fair because it'll be full of tourists, the real camel trading occurs almost a week before the fair's announced schedule, hotels are more expensive at the height of the fair, and so on. If the idea of photographing a solitary dopey camel trader left with his final unsold scrawny camel (not to mention the gaggle of tourist-photographers who invariably will intrude in your viewfinder) excites you, go right ahead."

It seems it's gotten even worse. I haven't researched if there are any serious photo tours to Pushkar this year, but I suspect if there are any, they are very few.

Sheila Rock: Sera, The Way Of The Tibetan Monk

Photo © Sheila Rock-All Rights Reserved

The Sera monastery is near Mysore (India) and houses 5,000 Buddhist monks living in exile.  It's one of the best locations to witness the monk debates on the teachings of Buddha and the philosophy of Buddhism. It developed over the centuries as a famous place of scholarly learning, training hundreds of Buddhist scholars.

Sheila Rock is based in London, and her photographs were published in TIME, Elle, Glamour, Rolling Stone, Architectural Digest and the Sunday Times. Her photographs were shown in various exhibitions in New York City, London and Turin. Her portraits form part of the public collection at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

The Way of The Tibetan Monks' gallery of duotone photographs depicts the way of life in this Buddhist community, and shows a fraction of the photographs published in the photographer's book of the same title.

Writing of monk debates reminded me that I photographed and audio recorded the lively monk debates in a monastery in Bhutan, titled Sangha Debates.

Incredible India (Director Cut)

I saw this a few days ago on Facebook. It's guaranteed to bring a smile to your faces, especially if you're an Indophile.

 It's a commercial for the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India's 'Incredible India 2013' campaign directed by Prakash Varma and produced by Nirvana Films.

Lots of humor, some tongue in cheek, incredible color (of course) and a very cute main character who tries the Indian head "wobble", but (in my opinion) fails.

POV: The Gotipua And Style Evolution

Photo ©Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

I wrote how time flies in my yesterday's post, and that remark brought me back to 2004 when I traveled to Orissa via Chhattisgarh, and stopped for a short while in Raghurajpur, a small village near Puri.

This village is quite famous for being the centre for training Gotipua dance troupes. In the local language, “goti” means “single” and “pua” means “boy”, and this folk dance of Orissa has been performed for centuries by young boys who dress as females to praise Jaggannath and Krishna. The acrobatic movements in the dance is performed by the young boys, who are inspired by the life of Radha and Krishna. More information can be found here.

Looking through my image files of the time, I noticed how I still favored verticals back then. I now know that 90% of my photographs are shot in the landscape mode, principally because they lend themselves much better to multimedia storytelling.

In 2004, I used a Canon 10D (remember those?) which was my first digital camera. I used the venerable Canon 1D MarkII as my workhorse film camera. This image of this young gotipua must've been made with a 70-200 f2.8 lens...it was my favored lens back then. I seldom use it now.

I state the obvious but yes, time flies and personal styles evolve. I'm certainly not alone in this. On most of my photo expedition-workshops, I have photographers who are in the midst of their own evolution cycles. Some favor their 70-200 lenses, while others have already gone wider...and others are in the middle of the cycle.

I encourage the former to leave their heavy lenses back at our hotels, and use wider zooms or primes, and get closer...sometimes they listen..sometimes they don't.

In 2004, would I have thought that 8 years later I'd be principally using a Leica M9 rangefinder and a Fuji X Pro-1 on my travels? I don't think so.

Evolution comes slowly...at least for me. But one thing for sure...time flies.

Kris Bailey's Durga Puja: The Spirit of Kolkata

"Durga Puja is a celebration of the Mother Goddess, and the victory of the revered warrior Goddess Durga over the evil buffalo demon Mahishasura."

Kris Bailey recently sent me her audio slideshow made during my Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo~Expedition & Workshop™ which took place a little over a year ago (how time flies!!!).

It's Durga Puja time right now in the wonderful city of Kolkata. Kolkata, the city that to my mind epitomizes India more than any other city in India.

You ought to watch it as it encapsulate very well the tradition of this annual religious event and its rituals, especially as it is the most important observance in West Bangal. I had encouraged the participants in this workshop to produce monochrome photo essays, and Kris's work is unquestionably one of the best I've seen so far.

Apart from being an attorney in Northern California, Kris is a photographer who's keenly interested in South and South East Asia, and is particularly attracted to unusual rituals and religious festivals. She's already been on two of my most intense photo expeditions workshops, and that doesn't seem to deter her in the least.

You may want to drop by her Vimeo page where she has 4 videos of her audio slideshows, and by her blog, on which you'll find examples of her still photography in India and elsewhere.

Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak: The Sufi Connection

© Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak-All Rights Reserved

Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak has been busy. He is authoring a blog, and from what I've seen of it so far, it's about his spiritual peripatetic peregrinations and pilgrimages in India and Pakistan. Hard-core Sufi pilgrimages...some that I haven't even heard of.

He recently walked from Delhi to Ajmer (in Rajasthan)accompanied by several hundred fakirs; real or charlatans, it doesn't matter. Accompanied by men (and possibly women) whose fraternity is based on "if you have one chapati, and there is two of you, share it in two pieces, if you are four, share in four, if there is eight, share for eight” …” Blessed are those who have nothing”.

Double exposures, blurs, Holga...nothing is orthodox in Swiatoslaw's photography, and in his journals. Read his entries, and you'll realize there's more depth there than you may have thought.

And Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak is also an accomplished, and more orthodox, photographer as his travel photographs attest. He tells me his first name in Polish means 'praising the world', and he has lived up to it very appropriately.

Take a look at his work....exceptionally interesting, if unusual.

Ed Peters: Beyond The Indus

Photo © Ed Peters-All Rights Reserved

"It’s the challenge of capturing the texture of life, created by these contradictory elements, which draws me to India’s streets." -Ed Peters

And so writes Ed Peters prefacing his Beyond The Indus photo gallery... and what a photo gallery of captured moments of life! Just take a look at the photograph above...a man asleep, horizontally inert..and sort of Hindu angel floating above him, next to an askew small painting of the Taj Mahal, and a sliver of a woman staring at the photographer...

I was torn between featuring Beyond The Indus or Mexican Proximity (many of the photographs are from Oaxaca, my favorite Mexican town), but I decided to feature Ed's work from India because I was so taken by the above image.

A New York-based retired photojournalist, Ed is a Leica M9 user, as well as a Canon 5D Mark II for his photographic work. Possibly influenced by the work of Costa Manos and Alex Webb, Ed is obviously drawn to color...to the interplay of contrasts between shadow and light...and to the streets.

In an interview with Leica Liker, this is what he says about why he does street photography:

I find it enjoyable. Otherwise why bother? I like the process of walking, the challenge of making successful images, and the element of gamesmanship involved.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Ed Peters worked as a freelance photographer, before joining the staff of The Star Ledger in Newark, New Jersey. He subsequently relocated to Asia where he photographed the plight of Burmese refugees, and the pro democracy movement in Nepal. Returning to the United States, he joined a photo agency and photographed a wide variety of stories. These include the famine in Somalia, war in the former Yugoslavia, traditional wrestling in India, and the continuing AIDS crisis. He is now focusing on his personal work, especially street photography.

Anthony Pond: Faith, Frenzy...

Readers interested in unique religious and cultural events will like this. I guarantee it. Not the faint-hearted though.

Following his participation in my The Oracles Of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop in March, Anthony Pond has been a frequent contributor to The Travel Photographer blog, and his Faith, Frenzy multimedia essay is the most recent of his many audio slideshows I've already featured.

Not only is it his most recent, but I wager it's his best production so far. Tony used a Canon 5DMk2, audio recordings were made with a Zoom H1, and was edited in Lightroom, Audacity, and Final Cut Pro. I'm not a huge fan of merging stills with video footage, but Tony succeeded in merging these two mediums quite seamlessly.

The Oracles of Kodungallur celebrate their festival in the Bhagawati temple, which usually occurs between the months of March and April. It involves sacrifice of cocks and shedding of the Oracles own blood, to appease the goddess Kali and her demons who are said to relish blood offerings.

Anthony Pond worked for more than two decades in the criminal courts in California as an attorney for the Public Defender’s Office. Now pursuing his passion for travel and photography, he travels repeatedly to South East Asia and India, amongst other places, to capture life, the people and the culture.

Devansh Jhaveri: Ahmedabad

Photo © Devansh Jhaveri: All Rights Reserved

Devansh Jhaveri is a travel photographer, and describes himself -quite rightly- as being passionate in capturing ancient cultures and the human condition in unique, challenging situations. I wager you will agree with me that he is extremely talented

He reminded me that he had a portfolio review with me the Delhi Photo Festival last November, and I recall telling him that he was gifted, and his photographs were amongst the best I've seen in this genre.

You will see that his imagery is varied, ranging from travel photography (in India and elsewhere such as Egypt and Thailand), classical Indian dance, portraiture, fashion (exceptional!), fine arts, interiors and also videography.

Before I share with you my preferred gallery out of Devansh's travel work, I want to highlight his fashion work because it's well worth your time to have a look at them.

As for his very broad travel work, I particularly liked his Ahmedabad gallery perhaps because of those made in the Jami Masjid...one of the most impressive mosques in India. Two photos stand out...the one above, and the one following it on the gallery which depicts an elderly Muslim checking his bag while a couple is 'canoodling' in a corner.

You will also find a quartet of Devansh's self-published books on Blurb: Varanasi, Ladakh, Colleena Shakti and Lost & Found.

Finally, Devansh's biography page is the first I see of a photographer with a QR("Quick Response")  Code, which is a mobile phone readable barcode I wrote about here.

Brijesh Patel: McCluskieganj

Photo © Brijesh Patel-All Rights Reserved

Not too dissimilar from my previous post, here is another photo essay about disintegrating mansions and dwellings.

McCluskieganj was founded by the Colonisation Society of India in 1933 as a homeland for Anglo-Indians. In 1932 Ernest Timothy McCluskie, the founder of the town, invited some 200,000 Anglo-Indians in India to settle there. Of the nearly 250 original families, only 20 remain, as most of the Anglo-Indian community left after World War II, and the once spatial mansions are overgrown with jungle growth, and it's difficult to imagine that McCluskieganj was a paradise for mixed-race children of the British empire.

Brijesh Patel was born in Gujarat, and moved to the UK during his childhood. He enrolled at LCC for a Masters in photography, and awards from The Guardian, and the Winston Churchill Foundation supported his work in the UK and in India.

His McCluskieganj photo essay is one amongst many of his books that are hand made.

There are an estimated 80,000-125,000 Anglo-Indians living in India, most of whom are based in the large cities of Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kanpur, Mumbai and Tiruchirapalli. Some also live in Kochi, Goa, Pune, Secunderabad, Visakhapatnam, Lucknow, Agra, and in some towns of Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal.

Researching the subject, I chanced on this recent article in The Economist about Rita McDonald, an elderly Anglo-Indian who "...eats bacon and eggs for breakfast, speaks precise English and, though she has lived all her life in India, knows little Hindi or Bengali. Yet her home, hung with yellowing photographs of Queen Elizabeth and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, is thick with tales of poverty and loss."

Perhaps one of my photographer friends in Kolkata would be interested in taking this up? Imagine it as an audio slideshow!

Joshua Cogan: The Last Jews Of Cochin

Photo © Joshua Cogan-All Rights Reserved

"...I took to the road with a mission: to document vanishing cultures and enrich our understanding of social issue through photography and new media."

Joshua Cogan is a prolific documentarian of cultures, and anthropologist, an interactive producer and a storyteller, whose website has numerous galleries including my favorite, which he titles as In God's Own Land (a more appropriate title than The Last Jews Of Cochin) as it has images of Kerala, whose tourism soubriquet is God's Own Country.

The Cochin Jews, also known as Malabar Jews are the oldest group of Jews in India, who migrated mto India after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The Jewish area of Mattancherry, the area around its synagogue was once the centre of Cochin jewry, but there are just nine surviving members of the community, all of them over the age of 75, except one.

The surviving members are fluent Malayalam speakers, and follow Jewish customs and rituals diligently.

In addition to Joshua Cogan's galleries on his website, I would point you to an interview made with The Asia Society regarding the forced resettling of the artists living in the Kathputli Colony by the Delhi Development Authority as part of a new housing scheme. New Delhi’s Kathputli Colony has functioned as an artists’ colony for close to 50 years.

The interview is with Joshua Cogan and two of his colleagues, who have recently completed shooting their first documentary, Tomorrow We Disappear, about the Kathputli Colony's resettlement.

Anthony Pond: Kathakali, The Story Dance

Anthony Pond is hardly a stranger to The Travel Photographer blog, as Kathakali, The Story Dance of Kerala is the newest one of his many audio slideshows I've already featured.

In this latest one, Tony has very ably merged stills, ambient audio with video clips to produce a 3 minute multimedia look into the backstage preparations for a Kathakali performance, and then the performance itself.

Tony was a participant in The Oracles Of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop during which I had arranged a private photo shoot involving the performers of this ancient art form. The 3 hours make-up session, and the 2-1/2 hours performance took place at the Kalatharangini Kathakali School near Cheruthuruthy. The performers' intensity was incredible, and I recall mentioning that earlier on this blog that it had been the best Kathakali performance I'd ever witnessed...Tony's stills and video have very well captured that intensity.

Anthony Pond worked for more than two decades in the criminal courts in California as an attorney for the Public Defender’s Office. Now pursuing his passion for travel and photography, he travels repeatedly to South East Asia and India, amongst other places, to capture life, the people and the culture.

Rasha Yousif: At The Madrasa

As Rasha Yousif writes on her Vimeo page, Islam is the second-most practiced religion in India following Hinduism, while 24% of Kerala's population is Muslim. Muslims of Kerala believe that their origins in the area started in the 7th century AD when Islam originated in Arabia.

During my The Oracles Of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop, Rasha worked on a number of multimedia photo projects and one of her Soundslides (now converted to video) photo films is her At The Madrasa, whose still photographs and audio were taken at the madrasa of Cheraman Perumal Juma Masjid.

The photographs are in monochrome, and Rasha has done very well in merging the various audio tracks that include the students voices, and religious chants. You will see these Muslim children learning the Qur'anic texts and theology probably in the same style as their forefathers/mothers did centuries ago.

She is a photographer from the island nation of Bahrain, and is only the second Middle Eastern participant in my photo expeditions-workshops since I started them 10 years or so ago.

As a historical note, the Cheraman Perumal Juma Masjid in the Kodungallur is the first mosque in India, believed to have been built in 629 AD by Malik Ibn Dinar, who was a Persian slave and a contemporary of the Prophet Muhammad's disciples.

Stephen Dupont: A Tale of Two Slums

Photo © Stephen Dupont-All Rights Reserved

I really liked these two photographic essays of Polaroids made in the Mumbai slum Dharavi and the Senen slum of Jakarta by Stephen Dupont, an Australian photographer.

Dharavi is one of the world's largest slum and lies on prime real estate in the middle of India's financial capital, Mumbai and has a population estimated to be 1 million. Many businesses flourish in this slum, such as traditional pottery and textiles, a recycling industry, which generate an estimated $650 million turnover a year.

As for the Senen slum, it's a trackside slum in central Jakarta. It's also a center for recycling, and its inhabitants live cheek to jowl with the thundering trains.

Stephen Dupont has produced a photographs of fragile cultures and marginalized peoples, which capture the human dignity of his subjects, and do so with great intimacy and often in some of the world’s most dangerous regions. His work has earned him prestigious prizes, including a Robert Capa Gold Medal citation from the Overseas Press Club of America; a Bayeux War Correspondent’s Prize; and first places in the World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International, the Australian Walkleys, and Leica/CCP Documentary Award.

His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Aperture, Newsweek, Time, GQ, Esquire, French and German GEO, Le Figaro, Liberation, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Independent, The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, Stern, The Australian Financial Review Magazine, and Vanity Fair.

He has held major exhibitions in London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Canberra, Tokyo, and Shanghai, and at Perpignan’s Visa Pour L’Image, China’s Ping Yao and Holland’s Noorderlicht festivals.

Rasha Yousif: Katha'Kali And More

Photo © Rasha Yousif-All Rights Reserved

As a photo expedition-workshop leader,  I very frequently see fantastic photographs by participants that make me wonder (after I stomp my feet in frustration) why I haven't shot them too, but I'm also glad it was these photo workshops that made these possible.

One of these photographs is the one made by Rasha Yousif of the Katha'kali dancer in full regalia, adjusting his belt. It was during The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop™ this past March, and which saw us spending the better part of half a day with practitioners of this ancient dance form.

Rasha is a photographer from the island nation of Bahrain, and is a portfolio manager at a financial institution and has a Masters in Finance from DePaul University.

As Rasha writes on her blog: "One of the most memorable experiences I ever had in India was watching Kathakali dance performance. We had access to backstage makeup and costume preparations before the show. I came back from India with 6000+ photos I haven’t gone through most of them. I picked these two just to give a sneak peek of the photos that are yet to come!"

This photograph of a fisherman in Kochi is included a section of her iphone photography on the same blog,  and I encourage you to explore it...there are many gems in there.

Photo © Rasha Yousif-All Rights Reserved

Sacbee's The Frame: Kevin Frayer's Urs Festival

Photo © Kevin Frayer-All Rights Reserved

I've been waiting for coverage of this event! Just look at this flamboyant character!!!

The Sacramento Bee's photo blog The Frame features Kevin Frayer's remarkable photographs made during a major Sufi Muslim Urs festival in Rajasthan.

It starts off the series of these 36 photographs telling us that thousands of Sufi devotees from different parts of India annually travel to the shrine of Sufi Muslim saint Hazrat Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti, in Ajmer, in the Indian state of Rajasthan for the annual Urs festival observed to mark his death anniversary.

Along with other photographers, I've been photographing the Sufi traditions in South Asia for a while, especially trying to underscore the syncretic elements of this tradition with Hindusim, but to my chagrin I haven't been to this festival as yet...although I was in Ajmer a number of times.

Moinuddin Chishti is the more famous and revered Sufi saint of the Chisti order of the Indian Subcontinent. He was born in 1141 and died in 1230 CE, and is believed to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammed. He interpreted religion in terms of human service and exhorted his disciples "to develop river-like generosity, sun-like affection and earth-like hospitality."

I cannot help but to piggyback this feature by adding my own work on The Possessed of Mira Datar; an audio slideshow of black & white photographs made at one of the most famous shrines (or dargahs) in Gujarat. The still photographs of this audio slideshow were presented at the Angkor Photo Festival last November.

And for those who follow my posts for clues to my future photo expeditions-workshops, this may well be one for 2013. It'll be as intense as the Oracles of Kali's festival, the focus of my most recent photo expedition in Kerala this past March.