The People India
The portrait on the right is of a serious street photographer I photographed on the shoreline of the holy Ganges. I asked the shooter why he was so brightly kitted out. His was clearly not the usual unobtrusive “lurking street photographer” approach. He said his red jacket made people smile. It worked on me.
As you will see, color rules my Indian images.
The State of Rajasthan and the city of Varanasi were the last locations for my January 2020 The People series. Over a year and a half later I am just now showing the work. I lost my flow when the Covid-19 shit hit the fan.
The primary goal of my multi-location The People series, an ethnographic series (yes, a bit pompous), is to help us see both our similarities and differences via a portable studio that strips away non personal information - in this case, the location details. As I travel, I am both a street and studio photographer. Both random and not random.
Although my subjects are humans, I couldn’t leave India without at least one portrait of a holy cow - a ubiquitous and endearing element of daily Indian life. I managed to accomplish this at a cow sanctuary in Jaipur with the help of my assistants Ram and Raj. It’s funny that it was easier to get the cow to agree to be photographed than many people we approached.
——> A big namaste to my buddy Mahatma Gandhi who loves me :) right here in his video testimonial.
More special thanks to my friend Nikhil Pandit and his excellent tour company TGS Tours for simplifying the trip planning. Plus, he and his wife took me to a gigantic Jaipur wedding. Crazy!
Don’t forget to expand the photos via a sweet click. These should be viewed as lifesize.
