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.

Anthony Pond: Ginger Godowns (Mattencherry)

Anthony Pond is certainly prolific. His multimedia piece Ginger Godowns is the fourth audio slideshow I feature on my blog, and the second of his photographs and audio recordings made during The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop™.

And I know he's got a few more up his sleeve.

This time, he focuses on the area of Mattencherry with its ancient warehouses, or godowns, of ginger, pepper, turmeric, rice and other spices which are hand-sifted, bagged and marketed, filling the air with pungent, sharp aromas, which you can almost smell from this audio-slideshow.

The area of Mattencherry dates back to the Arab, Portuguese and Dutch traders before British colonial times, and its streets are lined with old dilapidated warehouses which can be easily imagined as having been in use even much before the 1500s.

My Work: The Art of Kathakali

One of the highlights of my Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop this past March was spending half a day at a Kathakali school near Thrissur, and documenting the preparations and performance of this ancient art. It was totally distinct from the usual superficial performances shown at the various tourist hotels, and the professionalism of the performers was breathtaking. Apart from the talent of the performers, I was especially struck by the singing which you hear on this "photo-film".

Kathakali is one of the oldest theatre forms in the world, and originated in Kerala. It's a group production, in which actors-dancers take various roles in performances based on themes from Hindu mythology, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

The elaborate make up sessions often take longer than the performances themselves, and follow a certain ritual.

I chose to process the photographs in sepia (DxO Labs), which were made with a Canon 5D Mark II and a Leica M9, with the ambient audio recording on a Tascam DR40.

You can also watch it in HD on Vimeo.

Sebastian Cortés: Backwaters India

Photo © Sebastian Cortes-All Rights Reserved

You'll have to navigate Sebastian Cortés's website a little bit to land on his Travel page which groups his wonderful work in photo essay form.

There are some 12 of those...Backwater Kerala (from which the above photograph is shown), Forever Rajasthan, Chic In Milan, Sidhpur in Gujarat (with magnificent old mansions...probably called havelis as they do in Rajasthan), Venice, Varanasi, Cinque Terre, the Colosseum in Rome, Fort Kochi, Portofino, Sotth Beach (Miami) and the Maldives.

If you haven't guessed it by now, yes...Sebastian Cortés works in both Italy and India. He was born in New York, and took up photography while at New York University film school.  In 1985, he moved to Milan and started photographing fashion and lifestyle photography assignments for international magazines and commercial clients, while also concentrating on portraits and fine-art work. In 2004 Sebastian moved together with his family to India, where he continues to work and produce various book projects.

Here's also his work of Pondicherry's interiors.


 

POV: The Best Marigold Hotel

Go see this movie!!!! No matter how old or young you are...you'll spend an enjoyable two hours in the company of world class actors...wit and realism.

The best line in the movie (and beyond) is uttered by Dev Patel:

 "Everything will be all right in the end... if it's not all right then it's not the end."

Priceless!

Very off geographical topic -- synagogue in Mumbai celebrates 150th anniversary

A ceremony Tuesday celebrated the 150th birthday of the Magen David synagogue in Mumbai, India. The synagogue, which underwent restoration last year, was built in 1861 by the philanthropist David Sassoon at a time when hundreds of Baghdadi Jews were migrating to India to escape religious persecution.

“This is probably the largest synagogue in India and, if you exclude those in Israel, probably the largest in Asia,” Solomon Sopher, chairman and managing trustee of the Sir Jacob Sassoon Charity and Allied Trusts, told India's Daily News & Analysis news agency.


He told the Mumbai Mirror (which also publishes a picture of the ceremony): “The Magen David synagogue is easily the biggest in India. Its beauty has been enhanced after the second renovation last year, at the cost of Rs 70 lakh.” He said the first renovation of the synagogue was done in 1910 by David Sasoon’s grandson Jacob.

India -- Jewish Heritage Trail here, too!

The Jerusalem Post runs a lengthy article by Shalva Weil about a nascent Jewish heritage trail in southern India. It is pegged to the situation of the 17th century synagogue in Parur, which is currently being renovated by public authorities after remaining abandoned and somewhat derelict for decades.

Last month, the government of Kerala, India’s southernmost state, armed with a matching grant from the central government, started the reconstruction of the Parur synagogue that used to be frequented by Cochin Jews before they came on aliya, largely in the 1950s. The last of the community immigrated in the 1970s, leaving behind a mere handful of people, and the synagogue has remained in disuse since then. Today, fewer than 40 Cochin Jews remain on the Malabar coast.

The conservation is progressing at such a pace that the chief architect in charge of the project, Benny Kuriakose, believes it will be completed by the autumn. This governmental and federal project could be a beacon for other countries, which pay lip-service to the preservation of Jewish heritage.

“I was very excited to hear that the Kerala government is renovating the Parur synagogue and restoring it to the glory of its past,” said Tirza Lavi, a native of Parur, and a today a curator of the Heritage Center for Cochin Jews at Nevatim, south of Beersheba. “We hope that Parur will be a showcase to the younger generation, displaying our communities’ rich and interesting history. I am sure that Cochin Jews in Israel will be glad to take part in the project and share their knowledge and memories.”

Weil writes that the Jewish heritage trail and Parur synagogue are part of a much larger project.

The reconstruction of the Parur synagogue is only a small cog in the wheel of a huge project called the Muziris Heritage Project, which includes archeological excavations and the reconstruction of other historical monuments in the area, such as temples, churches and mosques. The idea is to create a tourism trail from the ancient port of Muziris, today known as Kodungallor, through Cochin, Parur and other nearby areas, and develop the already-existing tourism boom. Today, Kerala is the eighth most favorite tourist destination in the world.

The seeds of the monumental project were planted only a few years ago. The beautiful Paradesi synagogue in Jew Town, Cochin, constructed in 1568, has been a well-known tourist site ever since Indira Gandhi attended its quatercentenary celebrations in 1968 and the Indiangovernment issued a special commemorative stamp on the occasion. In more recent history, however, the Kerala government agreed to undertake the renovation of another abandoned Cochin Jewish synagogue belonging to the Malabari Jews in the village of Chendamangalam, near Cochin. In February 2006, the synagogue was reopened with an exhibition on the Cochin Jews, and the synagogue has become a popular tourist destination.

Read full article here